


Royal Scientist

by natcl



Series: Not Exactly Truthful [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Depression, F/F, Friendship, Pre-Relationship Alphyne, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, because angsty angst will occur, did i mention the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 29,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22237300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcl/pseuds/natcl
Summary: Alphys has achieved her dream of becoming the Royal Scientist- so what if she had to tell a slight lie to get here? Now she just has to... figure out how to make an entire soul. No pressure. It's just monsterkind's dreams of freedom on the line, after all.
Relationships: Alphys & Mettaton (Undertale), Alphys/Undyne (Undertale)
Series: Not Exactly Truthful [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629982
Comments: 74
Kudos: 54





	1. Hired

Alphys leaves the throne room in a bit of a daze. Somehow, in all of her practicing and worrying and overthinking, she never prepared for such easy success.

Mettaton’s talking next to her, something about how Asgore is just the first of many to be wooed by his charm and wit and handsome LED face. He probably knows she’s not paying attention. He’s happy to gesticulate wildly to no one as long as he gets “suitable practice at corporeal expression, darling”. 

Everyone knew that the king was easygoing, but this was almost too simple, honestly. She’d managed to stutter her way through an introduction of her “a-a-anti-human combat r-robot and his, uh, artificial soul”, Mettaton spending the duration of her speech rolling around the throne room, trying to find every pose a single-wheeled box could possibly execute. 

Asgore had obviously been politely humoring her until she got to the soul part. It made her a bit relieved that Mettaton had managed to talk her out of telling the truth-

_“Asgore isn’t looking for a chief of robotics, darling, he’s concerned with souls.”_

_“But, lying to the k-king?”_

_“It’s barely a lie! Just a little fib to sell it! Trust me, beautiful, this is what seals the deal.”_

He’d been right (but she could never tell him that, god, she would never hear the end of it). Just the body wasn’t what had gotten Asgore sitting straighter, paying attention. As soon as she’d managed to semi-coherently mention making a new soul, he’d cut her out of her cycle of stuttering just by standing. 

With all the talk of King Fluffybuns and Mr. Fuzzy Pushover that seemed to follow Asgore around, she’d forgotten how huge he was, how good he was at commanding all the attention in a room. Even Mettaton had paused in his mission to find the perfect seductive pose in the golden flowerbeds to let the King of the Underground speak.

_“Well, I have to say that I am very impressed. It has been a long time since I have encountered such a scientific mind. And your creation is so impassioned and lifelike, you have obviously done a lot of work with souls._

_We do not currently have a royal scientist. The position is prestigious- I believe the previous royal scientist, whose name escapes me, designed the CORE... But if you can create a new, independent soul, you are certainly worthy of the title.”_

And now… now. Now she has a lab, and a budget- access to the royal coffers, a huge step up from scouring Waterfall’s dumps for scrap metal. She also has access to the human souls, which hadn’t even been a goal, but was far too intriguing to ignore. She has a job, now, too.

Her brand new mission is to create the seventh soul- no more human hunting, no more death, just science. Science that she can’t do. Because she didn’t actually create a soul. Because she just made a body for her friend, and now she has to pretend that his Totally Fabricated Not Even Slightly Ghost-ish soul was her creation.

This was the point in her anime where the intrepid protagonist would channel the power of friendship to make things right before they could spiral any further.

Unfortunately for Alphys, she really only has one friend, and he is just as wrapped up in this mess as she is.

Speaking of which, Mettaton has gone uncharacteristically silent next to her, the only sound the slight squeak of his single wheel. The elevator ride out of New Home is equally silent. The whirring of the CORE around them keeps things from getting too awkward, at least until they approach the elevator down to the first floor.

“...YOU KNOW, ALPHYS, DARLING. I’VE BEEN THINKING, THESE LAST FEW MINUTES.

I KNOW THAT WE DECIDED YOU WOULDN’T START ON MY REAL BODY FOR AWHILE, THAT I SHOULD RISE TO FAME BEFORE I DEBUT IT IN THE GLORIOUS FANFARE THAT SUCH A FORM DESERVES, BUT NOW THAT YOU HAVE A WHOLE LAB, AND MONEY, PERHAPS YOU COULD… START IT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER?”

Alphys takes a moment to figure out how to respond as she hits the button in the elevator.

“W-well, Asgore w-wants me to, to start on the s-souls immediately, and I still have to think about h-how I’ll keep pretending I know about… s-soul stuff. S-sorry?”

The elevator comes to a halt, doors opening to the bottom level of the CORE. Mettaton gives another momentary silence. One of the lights in the uppermost right corner of his face-panel flashes red. Alphys imagines that if he had a real face, his eye would be twitching.

“WELL, OF COURSE, A TEMPORARY BREAK AS YOU MAKE YOUR LEAP INTO THE SCIENTIFIC LIMELIGHT IS PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED! I SIMPLY ASK THAT YOU DO NOT NEGLECT MY WONDERFUL FORM- THAT BEAUTIFUL FACE WON’T BUILD ITSELF!”

And with that, he zooms away into the apartment building that sits in front of the CORE.

 _Not even a “toodles”. He must be really pissed, then_ , Alphys thinks with a snort.

For a moment, she just stares around at the smooth metal and flashing LEDs of the Underground’s greatest technological marvel. The CORE, singlehandedly powering the entire Underground. This is the kind of thing Royal Scientists are supposed to be able to make. She, Alphys, has to follow in these enormous footsteps. She, whose greatest and only invention is basically a metal shell, piloted by someone else.

Just a week ago she had been putting the finishing touches on that shell, Mettaton twirling around her in a blur of excited pink, waxing poetic about getting a body, getting to touch and hold and run and dance. 

He’d been so comically uncoordinated, those first minutes of corporeality. Unsurprisingly, it was hard to go from floating a few feet above the ground to balancing on a single wheel. She’d sat with him, helping him learn to change the colors of his LEDs and extend his arms. He’d really emoted for the first time, touched for the first time, given and received his first hugs (as uncomfortable as it was to hug an enormous metal box).

She tries to summon that joy, that gratification, that feeling of having done something good and helpful. _You’re useful, Alphys. You helped someone. Someone needed you, and you followed through._

She just can’t recall how that felt anymore.

This was probably how Mew Mew felt, after she controlled her first hapless victim with a kiss. New power, new tests, new secrets to keep. 

She can sell this. _She has to sell this._ The lie is already told, the questionable first victory out of the way. 

No turning back now.


	2. Entry Number 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New job, new home, new mysterious basement.

The Lab is… well, it’s very lab-ish. White, sterile- it’s like whoever built it took it straight from a human movie or comic book. It also says “LAB” on its front, which is a helpful reminder that this isn’t just a very lablike building.

The inside is even worse. White walls, white tiles, white, pipes, all glowing under blinding fluorescent lights. Alphys can see steel conveyor belts, unmoving, leading away into the back of the lab. The only break in the illusion is the fine layer of dust covering everything.

She’ll have to put a desk here somewhere, and figure out where she wants to set up her room. Maybe there will be some furniture left over from the previous Royal Scientist. Unlikely, seeing as they’ve been gone so long that no one remembers them beyond their creation of the CORE.

An elevator stands to her left. She could finish exploring the upper floor, but the pesky anime protagonist wannabe that lives in her brain is screaming that down means mystery and adventure.

Elevator time.

* * *

The bottom floor is exactly like the top, except that the fluorescents are burnt out. There are monitors on the walls that illuminate as she walks past, but none of them say anything yet. Down the hallway there’s, uh… wow, that door looks really ominous. She’ll save that for another time.

Honestly, it’s not much of an adventure. The basement is just a lot of narrow hallways and empty rooms. There’s a ventilation room filled with fans, a bathroom, and an oddly placed shower. The only furniture she can find is a bookshelf and TV set- she takes some rolled-up blueprints from the bookshelf to examine later. 

That bookshelf will be a good place for all her DVDs.

* * *

Cleaning the lab doesn’t take long- all it takes is a quick trip back to Waterfall and a mention of ‘lots of dirt’ and Woshua is practically polishing the place. Next, Alphys moves everything out of her house, assisted by her very convenient robot friend (who makes her solemnly swear not to drag him to another anime night in return). There isn’t a lot to move out- besides her bed and wardrobe, her only possessions are her various anime and memorabilia.

Mettaton already seems to have forgotten about their disagreement over his body. He’s just excited at how easy it was to get a slot on TV ( _“DARLING, IT’S A_ TRAVESTY! _HOW HAVE WE SUBSISTED ALL THIS TIME ON NAUGHT BUT THE OCCASIONAL BROADCAST OF ASGORE’S BORING LITTLE SPEECHES?”_ )

It’s nice that he doesn’t seem angry, but being around him in such an excited, melodramatic mood is exhausting. She breathes a sigh of relief when he leaves to keep planning his Big Break.

And now she has a house. A desk, a fridge, a worktable. She sets the blueprints on the worktable- she’ll look at them tomorrow. For now… it’s time to figure out what, exactly, she’s supposed to do with the enormous budget and free reign she has. 

Asgore chooses this moment of peace to call her.

“Alphys, I thought I’d check in and make sure you have everything you need to set up the Lab and get started.”

50% of the reason she’s wanted this job was so she’d be able to see the king in person ~~and write more accurate fanfics about his lustrous beard and soft-yet-muscular physique-~~

 _Anyway_ , if it means that her crush is going to call her regularly, maybe this won't be so bad.

“W-well, I just finished, uh, moving in, s-so… I’ll probably start with the... s-stuff… s-soon.” The stuff. Wow, Alphys.

“Oh, wonderful! I’m glad there’s good news. If there’s nothing you need, I’ll just leave you to your work.”

The best phone calls are the ones that are over quickly. Suddenly, she’s feeling a bit more motivated.

Her first order of business is to stall for time while she figures out _everything she’s going to need to know about souls._

She thinks back to the empty little monitors in the basement. What could be more science-y and official looking than experiment logs on the walls? She can write some vague first entries, make it look like she’s on track to making a soul… and then hopefully eventually manage to actually make a soul.

So here she is, standing in front of the first monitor from the elevator. What’s a cool way to say _“I haven’t done anything yet, but I promise I’m going to do something eventually”_?

**_ENTRY NUMBER 1: This is it... Time to do what the King has asked me to do. I will create the power to free us all. I will unleash the power of the SOUL._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I do want to continue this. This is a short update, but I was just having fun writing yesterday and decided to keep going.


	3. Entry Numbers 2 & 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why is the Librarby sign misspelled? What's the deal with this creepy little skeleton? And what the heck is a Wingding?

Alphys wakes up with a plan. First, she’s going to review those blueprints- if they belonged to the previous Royal Scientist, they might have something about the CORE or the Lab that she can use in her research. Next, she’s going to find every book she can about souls and spend the foreseeable future reading. Finally, she’s going to take a trip to Waterfall to try and find another figurine, because there’s a very obvious empty spot on her desk that has been bothering her since she moved in yesterday.

Okay, maybe that last one can wait.

There are two blueprints on her worktable. She unrolls the first one, coughs, pushes her glasses up her nose, and…

The blueprint is in some strange kind of code. Symbols cover it in place of notes and labels- most of them are blurred with age, but she can make out hands and smiley faces and what look like flags and skulls. 

human soul essence extraction device

power present in every human soul

allows persistence of the soul after death

It’s headache inducing, so Alphys ignores the symbols in favor of the machine being diagrammed.

It looks like the skull of a dragon or some other beast. The diagram shows a heart- a right-side up heart, _a human soul_ \- in one of the eyesocket-looking openings. 

A chill crawls down her spine. She copies down the legible symbols and rolls the blueprint back up.

The second blueprint is worthless. If the first one was slightly corrupted by age, this one is completely unintelligible. Whatever the blueprint was of is obscured by dark stains, and only a few singular symbols have escaped smudging and blurring. 

What exactly was her predecessor trying to do?

* * *

She takes the River Person’s boat to Snowdin. Except for their usual cryptic statement towards the middle of the journey, they are silent, leaving her to her thoughts. Whose title is she inheriting? What kind of professional scientist writes in unintelligible scribbles?

Snowdin is as cold as usual, and Alphys curses her lack of foresight. Lab coats and snow do not mix. But Snowdin has the only library (librarby?) in the Underground, so here she is. 

_On the Nature of Souls. Monster Souls. A Beginner’s Guide to Jazz & Soul Music. Souls & the Barrier- an Essay._

So many books about souls. Maybe she really can do this. 

_Souls & the Barrier- An Essay_ discusses ‘the prettiest soul colors’ and 'the magic wall thing that keeps us here' and ends with the memorable passage, “I feel in my SOUL that I should get a good grade on this essay. ^.^”

 _A Beginner’s Guide to Jazz & Soul Music_ is about human jazz and soul music. Cool, but it’s not gonna break the barrier. Music is more Mettaton’s thing anyways.

 _Monster Souls_ actually gets into the makeup of monster souls- but it’s all things she already knows. Every monster learns at a young age that their bodies and souls are intrinsically connected. What _she’s_ looking for is what allows human souls to be so separate from their host bodies.

 _On the Nature of Souls_ finally, finally gets a little bit to the point. “Love, hope, compassion… This is what people say monster SOULs are made of. But the absolute nature of “SOUL” is unknown. After all, humans have proven their SOULs don’t need these things to exist.” 

It’s something else, some unknown force that allows human souls to persist after death and to dwarf monster souls in strength. And if she can isolate that… if she can figure out what exactly gives human souls their power, she can harness it and break the barrier. Maybe. Somehow.

**_ENTRY NUMBER 2: The barrier is locked by SOUL power.. Unfortunately, this power cannot be recreated artificially. SOUL power can only be derived from what was once living. So, to create more, we will have to use what we have now... The SOULs of monsters._ **

* * *

She’s been in the library for hours when she finally puts down the last soul-related book. At least now she has some experiment ideas. Hopefully it’ll all click into place once she sees the human souls for the first time.

Hopefully. 

She stretches, wipes off her glasses, and pulls the notes from the blueprint out of her pocket.

How to even begin deciphering these? Especially after reading about souls for so long that the symbols look blurry.

She needs to clear her head.

Alphys crunches out into the snow, wrapping her lab coat around her body and heading for the path to Waterfall. Running water has always been soothing, a consequence of growing up around so much of it.

“you look uncomfortable. then again, i would be too, in a lab coat in the snow.”

Alphys is ashamed to admit that she jumps at the voice. She turns around, already beginning to stutter something about not remembering to change out of her lab coat, but the short skeleton standing behind her looks more amused than anything. 

“I w-was just hea-heading for Waterfall a-a-anyway.” Alphys recognizes this skeleton. He has sentry stations around Waterfall and odd jobs around Hotland. Honestly, from what she's heard, he's pretty much everywhere. 

“well, sorry about all the snow. sometimes it makes for a pretty _cold_ reception. see ya around.”

She snorts a laugh just a second too late for it to be natural and keeps walking. She turns around for just a second to make sure the guy isn't still standing there.

When she turns around again, he's in front of her.

She knows her anime, and this is some anime villain stuff right here.

"you dropped this."

It's her slip of weird-symbol paper.

"T-thank yo-"

"don't thank me until you've explained why you're carrying around a page of wingdings."

Wingdings?

Wait. The weird symbols. Does he know them?

"I-I found them in my n-new lab. I n-n-need to, uh, translate them."

If it was cold before, it's freezing now. Something about this is really, really wrong.

"you probably don't need to translate them. no offense, but ya don't seem like the type to need a 'human soul essence extraction machine'."

A human soul extraction machine. Holy shit.

For a second, Alphys just stares at her feet, trying not to show this creepy, probably dangerous skeleton what she's thinking. This might be exactly what she needs. She has so many questions, all starting with 'what else does it say'.

But he's gone.

* * *

Alphys returns to her lab, not sure whether to feel dejected at losing a possible lead, excited that she has a lead in the first place, or plain exhausted.

She puts on Mew Mew 1. There are other shows that she wants to start, but Mew Mew is anime comfort food, and she needs that right now.

She has her phone out, ready to call Mettaton and pressure him into a marathon night, when she remembers her promise not to make him come to these anymore.

He's probably busy, anyway. He has his Big TV Debut to plan. That's okay.

He did always say that anime was garbage.

* * *

The morning brings a sore back and a spilled cup of instant noodles to clean up.

She's tossing the cup into the trash can by her desk when she notices something on the ground by the door.

Her paper, laying there. Still covered in those scribbles- Wingdings- but now with labels next to them. Every line of nonsense has been translated.

human soul essence extraction device

 _human soul essence extraction device_

power present in every human soul

 _power present in every human soul_

allows persistence of the soul after death

 _allows persistence of the soul after death_

This is it.

When she'd read that book about monster souls, she had briefly considered whether she could simply collect a few monster souls and repurpose them somehow- but when the body dies, the soul dies (unless you're a boss monster, but she's not going to try and take Asgore's soul anytime soon). 

With this... maybe there's a possibility. A glimmer of hope. Maybe she doesn't have to fake her way through this job. Maybe she can actually do what she's been asked to do.

**_ENTRY NUMBER 3: But extracting a SOUL from a living monster would require incredible power... Besides being impractical, doing so would instantly destroy the SOUL's host. And, unlike the persistent SOULs of humans... The SOULs of most monsters disappear immediately upon death. If only I could make a monster's SOUL last..._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> snas undertale


	4. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wake up, have a mysterious-blueprint-related epiphany, and try not to sweat on the King of Monsters. All in a day's work for the Royal Scientist

It’s pretty clear what she has to do now. The dimensions for the machine are thankfully not in Wingdings, which means that she knows how big to make each part, and it looks like each part is gonna be _huge_.

As soon as she reads those dimensions, her mind jumps into calculations- she can only pull so much scrap metal out of Waterfall at a time, so this is going to take awhile- but she remembers after a second that she isn’t just a hobbyist working out of her house anymore. All she has to do is ask Asgore.

All she has to do is stand in front of her boss. Who also happens to be her crush. Who also happens to be King of the Underground. And ask him for money.

She wonders if there’s a chance in hell that she can get Mettaton to do it for her. 

_No_. This is her job, and she needs to stand up there and show the king that she can do it! Sure, she may have faked her way into it in the first place, and sure, this might be the first time so far that she’s actually had a concrete plan, but she’s getting it done!

Alphys is halfway to New Home before she realizes that she left the blueprints on her worktable.

* * *

She stands by the door to the throne room, trying not to sweat on the blueprints, steeling herself. She hasn’t ever pitched anything like this before- she’d already known how much Mettaton wanted a body when she proposed it and presented her first designs, so she hadn’t had to worry that he would reject her. Or fire her, or banish her to the Ruins for being too awkward to handle, or throw her into the barrier in an attempt to break it with her useless projectile of a body-

Anyway. The point is, this isn’t going to be anything like sitting around in Mettaton’s bedroom, trying to talk him down from ‘sparkly laser eyes’ and focus him on things like hair color and leg length. This was going to be a serious science meeting with her serious boss.

She makes _King Fluffybuns, Mr. Fuzzy Pushover, the nicest, most fatherly king the Underground could have gotten_ into a mantra as she walks into the throne room. 

“Ah! Alphys! I was not expecting you today! Please, make yourself at home. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

See? Nothing to worry about it was already going great. He was being nice, and cordial, ~~and addressing her in that deep bass rumble of the best voice a fanfiction writer could ask for~~. It was gonna be okay. 

“Alright! Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

“Uh, y-yes, actually! S-see, I’ve been doing m-more research ab-about souls, since I m-moved in, and I have some- some blueprints. F-from the… old Royal Scientist? And th-this, this machine c-could- it could- it could help ha-harness the power of the human s-souls.”

Rushed, but intelligible. Better than she’d thought she would do.

“I have to admit, I did not expect you to make progress so quickly! This is a wonderful surprise. Do you need anything for the development of this machine?”

Alright, moment of truth. _You are ~~Mew Mew~~ the protagonist. Sway him with ~~a kiss~~ your persuasive words_. 

“Actually, it’s a v-very big, m-machine, so I’ll pro-probably need… m-metal. Lots of m-metal. And, uh, also m-maybe some h-help with building?”

And she almost stuck the landing, too.

“Oh, of course! Call me and tell me how much metal you end up needing, and I’ll send some of our CORE workers down to help.”

“T-thank you! I w-will do th-that! Th-thanks- uh, Y-Your Highness.”

“We will be working closely in this project, so I think you can call me Asgore. Good luck with your calculations- oh, and send my regards to that robot of yours. I heard he’s going to be on TV, soon.”

“I de-definitely will, Y-Your- uh, As-Asgore...... Uh, bye!”

Fleeing the way she does is one of the least dignified moments of her life. She has… a lot to think about, now.

First of all, she did it! She’s doing it! Asgore was _pleasantly surprised_ by her initiative! She’s doing even better than he thought she would, apparently!

She can’t really contain herself right now, so she does the first thing she can think of.

It’s been a few days since she’s talked to Mettaton, and she just _knows_ that he’ll be happy for her.

The phone rings a few times, but that’s normal. Mettaton always picks up late ‘because it builds suspense, darling’. It gives her some time to think about how much she should tell him. Does he really need to know about the weird blueprints and cryptic symbols and creepy little skeletons-

“HELLO? EARTH TO ALPHYS?”

Oops. Maybe she's thinking a little too much.

“O-oh! M-mettaton! Hi!”

“HI THERE, GORGEOUS. IS THERE ANY REASON YOU CALLED ME, OR ARE WE JUST GOING TO SIT SILENTLY ON THE PHONE FOR AWHILE?”

There’s the Mettaton she knows.

“Mettaton! I! T-talked to Asgore!”

“WELL, YES, DARLING, I WAS THERE.”

“N-no, Mettaton, I t-talked to him ag-again. H-he’s going to help me b-build… s-something.”

“OH, WHAT IS HE HELPING YOU BUILD? ‘S-SOMETHING’ COULD MEAN A HUMAN SOUL OR A TOASTER, DARLING.”

“It’s a m-machine that t-takes power fr-from human souls, a-actually.”

“OH MY! YOU’RE ACTUALLY DOING IT! THAT’S WONDERFUL! I’D LOVE TO SAY I DIDN’T DOUBT YOU FOR A SECOND, BUT I’LL ADMIT THAT I WAS A BIT WORRIED!”

Alphys knows he’s not trying to put her down. If anything, he’s just trying to be as dramatic as possible. She can imagine him on the other side of the line, draping himself dramatically over whichever poor, innocent piece of furniture has ended up in his line of sight. She wouldn’t put it past him to be faux-swooning right now, either. That’s just Mettaton.

“Y-yes, w-well, it’s going so much b-better than I expected! I w-was so worried about asking for h-his help, and…” She trails off. How can she expect a prospective actor to relate to her performance anxiety?

“WELL, GORGEOUS, OF COURSE YOU WERE NERVOUS! YOUR BIG MOMENT! YOUR BREAKOUT SPEECH! YOUR STEP INTO THE LIMELIGHT, ALONGSIDE ‘MR. DREAMY’ NO LESS! OF COURSE YOU WERE NERVOUS!”

Oh, well, maybe he does get it. She’s going to forever regret the day she accidentally called Asgore ‘Mr. Dreamy’ in front of him, though.

“S-speaking of d-debuts, h-how’s the b-big episode c-coming along?”

“AH, I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED! IT’S GOING TO BE AMAZING! THEATRICAL! YOU’LL BE WATCHING, WON’T YOU?”

“O-of course! I’m s-so happy for y-you, h-honestly.”

It’s true. They’ve been planning this for so long. How many days and nights has she spent, sitting in Mettaton’s room as he floats back and forth talking about the unstoppable team they’d make, once she was Royal Scientist and he was the Underground’s biggest star. She’d laughed, the first time he’d said ‘Royal Scientist Alphys’.

But now it's so close. Everything they’d imagined for themselves is finally within reach.

Mettaton’s obviously thinking the same way, because the next thing he says is, “WE’VE COME SO FAR, HAVEN’T WE? IT’S STRANGE TO THINK THAT I’VE ONLY HAD THIS WONDERFUL FORM FOR A WEEK, AND YOU’VE ONLY HAD THIS JOB FOR A FEW DAYS… YET HERE WE ARE!”

“H-here we are, y-yeah.”

…  
…  
…

“WELL, DARLING, IT’S BEEN A JOY, BUT DON’T YOU THINK IT’S TIME WE ADDRESS THE BEAUTIFUL, GLAMOROUS ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM?”

“Are-aren’t elephants in the room supposed to be an unglamorous _bad_ thing?”

“MY BODY, SWEETHEART, I’M TALKING ABOUT MY BODY. ONCE YOU’RE FINISHED BUILDING THIS SOUL-MACHINE-THINGY, YOU CAN KEEP WORKING ON IT, CAN’T YOU?”

“W-well, I’ve, uh, g-got to go! Sc-science to d-do, uh, m-m-measurements to get to Asgore… I’ll b-be watching y-your TV thing, b-b-bye!”

She hangs up before she can second guess herself and starts making her way out of the castle.

* * *

She’s never had access to the castle like this before. Sure, anyone can technically wander around here, but she’s never had an _excuse_ before. This is new and exciting, so who can really blame her when she decides to keep walking past the elevator?

Besides, there might be some information about souls lying around. The king has six of them, after all.

It’s not snooping, it’s _research_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fact that Alphys canonically calls Asgore, king of monsters, 'Mr. Dreamy', is probably my favorite plot-irrelevant Alphys fact.


	5. Entry Number 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one was supposed to see these.

The castle is basically just a lot of hallways overlooking the city of New Home. It’s all very monochrome, without a lot to differentiate one room from another.

People like Gerson who can remember other eras say that once upon a time, New Home and the castle were as bright and vibrant as Snowdin at Christmas. Banners and tapestries, proudly flying the Deltarune, had lined the walls. New Home hosted festivals and celebrations, and everything smelled like the queen’s butterscotch pie. 

Then tragedy struck, and the Underground lost hope again. New Home was hit the hardest. It didn’t seem right, to party or fly brightly colored banners. The city went gray with mourning.

Alphys wishes she could have been alive to see that glory. Really, though, the only people who remember it are Asgore, ghost monsters, and (sometimes) forgetful old Gerson.

It’s after the sixth or seventh identical hallway ending in the ninth or tenth small storage room that Alphys starts to admit to herself that Asgore probably wouldn’t leave important information or artifacts just lying around. 

She’s turning around to leave when she notices something sitting innocuously by the door- a stack of tapes. VHS tapes- she can probably put them in that TV in the basement of the Lab.

It’s not stealing, really. She’s just going to watch them once, then she’ll bring them back here. What could the harm be?

* * *

Alphys knows her strengths- she’s smart and analytical, perfect for science. Unfortunately, she is most definitely not good at looking inconspicuous. Even on her best days, she would look out of place wandering the castle the way she is right now, and on her best days she isn’t holding slightly crumpled blueprints and a stack of ‘borrowed’ tapes. 

She doesn’t relax until she’s back at the lab and taking the elevator down to the basement. She sits down in the TV room- which looks a lot less grim now that the shelves are filled with colorful anime DVDs and tapes- and examines her new VHSs for a moment. They’re helpfully labeled 1 through 5. 

No time like the present. She puts the first tape in and turns on the TV.

_Pssst. Gorey, wake up._

The screen is black- either they’re filming in the dark or the lens cap is on. The woman’s voice comes through loud and clear, though.

_Mmm? What is it, dear? … er, and why do you have that video camera?_

She knows that voice. She just heard that voice a few hours ago. ‘Gorey’ is Asgore.

The woman, who called Asgore ‘Gorey’, who Gorey called ‘dear’... that has to be Queen Toriel.

Alphys really shouldn’t be watching this.

_Shush! I want to get your reaction. Gorey, dearest. What is my favorite vegetable?_

_Hmmm… Carrots, right?_

_No no no! My favorite vegetable is...Eda-MOM-e… get it???_

The tape is cute, and it gives Alphys some ideas. Normally, of course, she ships Asgore with herself. But Tori and Gorey is definitely a ship with potential. It almost makes her wish the queen hadn’t disappeared… and, well, she couldn’t blame Queen Toriel, after everything that had happened. But it didn’t hurt to be nostalgic, and since Asgoriel had technically been canon until Toriel’s disappearance… well, it’s a good ship!

The first tape relaxes her a little bit. Apparently, these are just royal family home videos. She puts the second in.

This one is also black. If she hadn’t watched Mew Mew on this TV last night, she would think the screen was broken. 

_Okay, Chara, are you ready? Do your creepy face! AHHHHH!! Hee hee hee! Oh! Wait! I had the lens cap on... What!? You're not gonna do it again...? Come on, quit tricking me! Haha!_

It’s the voice of a child. Talking to someone named Chara. Chara, the first fallen human. The speaker is Asriel, probably. 

It’s a little sad, hearing the excited voice of a child playing with his adopted sibling, unable to know how little time they had left.

She doesn’t want to keep thinking about that, so she turns that one off and inserts Tape 3.

_Howdy, Chara! Smile for the camera! Ha, this time I got YOU! I left the cap on... ON PURPOSE! Now you're smiling for noooo reason! Hee hee hee._

Just two kids, messing around. No need to be sad. No need to think about what might have been different if those two kids hadn’t… yeah. She really, really shouldn’t be watching this.

_What? Oh, yeah, I remember. When we tried to make butterscotch pie for Dad, right? The recipe asked for cups of butter... But we accidentally put in buttercups instead. Yeah! Those flowers got him really sick._

Alphys hadn’t been alive yet, back then. Apparently, though, the king’s illness was the beginning of that horrible tragedy. To hear Gerson tell it, Asgore had barely recovered when Chara fell ill. And, well, everyone knew the story after that.

_I felt so bad. We made Mom really upset. I should have laughed it off, like you did... Um, anyway, where are you going with this? Huh? Turn off the camera...? OK._

Why does she feel like she’s about to hear something really bad? She can’t explain this sudden dread.

She puts in Tape 4.

_I... I don't like this idea, Chara. Wh.. what? N-no, I'm not... ... big kids don't cry. Yeah, you're right. No! I'd never doubt you, Chara. Never! Y... yeah! We'll be strong! We'll free everyone. I'll go get the flowers._

Oh no. Oh no. The implications… no. She has to be wrong. This can’t really be…

Next tape.

_Chara... Can you hear me? We want you to wake up…_

The queen.

_Chara! You have to stay determined! You can't give up! You are the future of humans and monsters…_

The king. This is bad. This is really bad.

_... Psst... Chara... Please... Wake up... I don't like this plan anymore._

Asriel. There was a plan. It was planned.

_I... I... ... no, I said... I said I'd never doubt you. Six, right? We just have to get six... And we'll do it together, right?_

That terrible, terrible tragedy… it wasn’t an accident.

And there’s no way Asgore knows that. The way he is now… recovering, moving on, continuing to rule… if he’d seen these tapes, who knows if he could have brought himself to collect six human souls.

She’d meant to return these to the castle… but now she’s not so sure. She has to think about this.

It’s late, anyways. She’ll deal with this tomorrow morning.

**_ENTRY NUMBER 4: I've been researching humans to see if I can find any info about their souls. I ended up snooping around the castle... And found these weird tapes. I don't feel like Asgore’s watched them... I don't think he should._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang, I'm writing this way faster than I expected to. And here's our first taste of the Big Sad.


	6. Determination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally time...

Alphys wakes up early and can’t get back to sleep. She’s unsettled, honestly. She resists the temptation to go back down there and watch the tapes again, confirm that they weren’t just a horrible dream.

She figures out the dimensions for the machine. She calls Asgore. She heads to Waterfall and manages to find a figurine to fill the annoying empty space on her desk. 

She doesn’t think about VHS tapes or blissfully oblivious kings or little kids who had no idea how badly their plans were going to backfire.

* * *

Once construction of the machine is underway in her basement, she has to spend most of her time in her lab to oversee all of it. Luckily, the workers don’t need a lot of help- they usually work in the CORE, so they know their way around complex machines. Alphys, on the other hand, isn’t so used to large-scale construction. She’s good at design and circuitry and robotics, not carrying around big hunks of metal and smoking around the water cooler that showed up down here at some point. She finds herself sort of uselessly hovering around the construction site, getting in the way more often than not. 

It's a welcome distraction when, the day after construction begins, Mettaton has his big TV premier. It’s a pretty immediate hit- turns out people really were bored of having nothing but the King’s speeches and the occasional scavenged human movies to watch. Suddenly, Mettaton’s on every time slot, pretty much all day every day.

He calls her as soon as his first episode is off air, high on call-ins and ratings, and they catch up. (”WE HAVEN’T TALKED IN SO _LONG_ , DARLING, HOW ARE YOU?”). The next morning, there’s a poster wedged under her door, signed in loopy handwriting; _Thank you for making my dreams come true_.

She’s grateful, even if she doesn’t like how final it sounds.

Talking to Mettaton again also reminds her that the soul machine isn’t her only project right now. He very conspicuously did not mention his body during their call, which ironically reminded her that she hasn’t started it at all.

So, while she waits for construction to finish in the basement, she pulls out her notebook and starts making some real sketches. 

‘Mettaton EX’ (because cool new second forms always need cool new names) was basically just designed with ‘hot anime villain’ in mind. He’s going to be very pink- pink eyes, pink boots, pink chestplate, pink heart. Originally, she was hoping to make him look pretty mech-like, almost like the Transformers from those human movies, but Mettaton loved humans so much… it just seemed right to make him more humanoid. Especially once she’d seen how excited he’d gotten at the idea of having legs.

She also decides to add some weaponry- one of her selling points to Asgore had been Mettaton’s ‘advanced anti-human combat systems’, and although an indestructible metal shell is a start, she should probably add some actual combat systems too. She’s told enough lies to the king that allowing another one to persist is too stressful.

* * *

In the two weeks it takes to get the machine finished, she manages to get blueprint mockups and a very basic exoskeleton finished. When Mettaton calls her in between shows to ask her about her progress, she gets to say that she’s finally started.

She tries not to be hurt when he sounds genuinely surprised.

* * *

The machine is ready. It has been for a few days, actually, but getting the six souls transferred down here had been a delicate procedure. The containment tubes housing each one had to be taken from their slots in front of the barrier and very slowly, very gently moved one by one into her lab.

And now Alphys has six souls and a human soul essence extraction machine.

The idea of actually picking up a _human soul_ is freaking her the hell out. She’s already layered up in gloves, goggles, thick rubber boots, and scrubs under her lab coat. She looks really dorky- basically the pre-makeover protagonist of a slice of life high school anime about a dork’s transformation into a prom queen. Emphasis on _pre-makeover_. 

The hard part is actually psyching herself up to reach in and touch a human soul.

Eventually she manages to select one. She just gravitates naturally to the green soul, something about how gentle its glow seems in comparison to the others. She flips open the lid, and reaches inside.

A soul. She’s holding a soul. This close, she can see how it bobs just slightly up and down, how its glow seems to eb in and out. The human who owned this soul is long gone, but somehow, it still seems so _alive_.

It’s mesmerizing. The warmth she can feel through her gloves pulses gently in time with the glow. Alphys is transfixed. 

She remembers a family gathering as a child, where an aunt had handed her the delicate little egg of one of her future cousins, and she’d spent the next few minutes sweating and trying not to crush the tiny little life in her claws. 

This is like that, but without the crushing anxiety. Instinctually, she knows that she could shatter this little soul in her hands as easily as making a fist, but just the presence of the soul soothes all of that down to nothing.

She tears her eyes from the miraculous little construct in her hands just long enough to get to the machine without tripping. She’s already set up the test tube in the ‘mouth’ of the machine (god, could this thing look any more ominous and occult?), and now it was just a matter of seeing what came out.

She sets the soul in the ‘eyesocket’ of the machine, and watches it bob up and down there for a moment, a chill starting to seep through her as soon as its comforting warmth is gone.

Then she flips the activation switch, and everything goes white.

* * *

She blinks away spots and tries to orient herself again. She's dizzy, and it takes a second for everything to come into focus again.

The machine looks completely intact, and it's whirring gently, which is a relief.

Next, she runs to the soul. It’s intact, still bobbing gently in place. Its glow is a little dimmer, and when she picks it up, the warmth feels a little weaker. But it’s not even slightly cracked, and she gets it back into its tube without a hitch.

Now the test tube. The moment of truth.

And there, at the bottom, is just a tiny pool of sparkling, shifting red. This was it. The substance her mysterious, possibly deranged predecessor had called ‘human soul essence’. The power of a human soul to survive after bodily death.

It's just as mesmerizing as the soul was, even in such a small amount.

Human soul essence… such a weird, clunky term. Some dramatic effect, sure, but there had to be a cooler word for the stuff. Something more fitting to this shifting, subtle power.

It’s strange, how the next moment the name just seems to come to her, like it was meant to be thought of.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 5: I've done it. Using the blueprints, I've extracted it from the human SOULs. I believe this is what gives their SOULs the strength to persist after death. The will to keep living... The resolve to change fate. Let's call this power... "Determination."** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think that the kindness soul would emanate a little bit of kindness, or seem less intimidating than the others. Good vibes.
> 
> Minor headcanons fill me with determination.


	7. Entry Number 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every experiment needs test subjects.

Alphys spends the rest of her day extracting determination from the human souls. Each of them yields a different amount of the stuff: the purple, yellow, and orange souls each fill roughly an entire test tube, while the two blue souls barely manage to give more than the green one did.

She combines all of her test tubes of determination and sets up a workspace. She chooses the sink room because staying as clean as possible is crucial to making sure the determination remains uncontaminated.

That’s done, and now it’s time to call Asgore.

She’s called him and spoken to him in person a few times now, but the combination of regal and intimidating ~~(and hot)~~ that he seems to exude means that it’s never easy.

Plus, the things she knows now, the additional secrets sitting in her basement that she has to keep… it’s hard to keep calm on the phone right now.

But, as Mettaton would say, ‘It’s showtime!’

“Howdy, Alphys. How is everything going?”

“I-it’s going well, a-actually! I’ve m-managed to extract power f-from all of the h-human, uh, souls, and they’re all b-back in containment.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful news. If you don’t mind, I’d like to return the souls to the capital as soon as possible. Better safe than sorry!” He sounds so relieved- she probably should have done a better job convincing him that the machine wouldn’t destroy them. “Do you have a plan for that power?”

“W-well, I’d like to t-try adding it t-to monster souls, to, uh, help them l-last after the m-monster dusts, a-a-and hopefully be p-powerful en-enough to be mistaken for human so-souls by the b-barrier.” It’s still a rough plan, sure, but hey, she’s done pretty well just making it up as she goes so far. “Th-the problem is f-finding m-monsters who are ab-about to d-dust, to in-inject it into.”

“I may be able to help you with that. I have a registry of the families whose loved ones have fallen down so I can support them in such trying times. I’m sure many of them would be happy to help in the breaking of the barrier.”

“T-that would be p-perfect! W-wow, Asgore- I m-mean, th-thank you so m-much.”

Being able to test this on monsters who had already fallen down… oh, Alphys hopes Asgore is able to find enough subjects. This was the most ethical option, after all- no chance of any of them feeling pain or suffering unnecessarily or having to live a half-life if this failed.

This was going so much better than she'd expected.

* * *

Asgore has made the announcement, and apparently a few monsters have already agreed to donate their fallen family members to her cause.

She returns to the castle to replace the souls next to the border. Before she leaves, in preparation for the sudden influx of bodies about to hit her lab, Asgore gives Alphys permission to check his storage rooms for any furniture she can use.

Essentially, she’s gotten permission to do what she already did a few weeks ago.

The hallways are just as gray as she remembers, and the storage rooms just as identical and dusty.

Room 1 is just boxes of what look like… old snail shells? She knows snail pie used to be a delicacy, and Mettaton had told her that the royal family used to buy a lot of snails from his and his cousin's farm, but a whole room full of shells? Weird thing to keep around. Maybe Asgore isn't as over the queen as she’d thought (which means Asgoriel still has a chance, if the queen’s alive somewhere!!!!!).

Room 2 contains rows upon rows of textbooks, in many subjects. It must be an extra storage area for the Underground’s singular school.

Room 3 holds what looks like surgical equipment, which makes sense, since the castle is near New Home’s hospital. She sets aside a box of syringes and makes a mental note of a few surgical tables.

Room 4 is entirely full of... vending machines? Why, she doesn’t know. She makes a note of these, too. She’s going to be down in the lower lab a lot these next few weeks, and some easy-access popato chisps will be helpful in keeping her stamina up.

Room 5 has a lot of twin beds. For a moment, Alphys dismisses them… but then, she remembers that she’s going to be using monster bodies for this experiment. Even if they’re basically gone, even if they can’t feel a thing… it just seems right to give them a dignified place to rest. She makes note of the beds.

Room 7 contains stacks upon stacks of boxes. A quick check inside reveals lots of childrens’ toys. Part of her reasons that they’re probably just spare toys from the school, but the part of her that’s still reeling with revelations about the royal family wonders what other children might have played with these…

Room 8 has lots of refrigerators. Also useful.

Room 9 is empty. That’s when she decides to call it a day. She tells Asgore what she needs, and the workers have it all down in her lab by that evening. 

Alphys spaces the beds out in the biggest room, puts the operating tables and syringes in the her workroom, and puts the vending machine next to that extra-spooky door she still hasn’t explored yet. The fridges go just beyond the DT Extraction Machine. 

Then she sits down in front of her TV for a Mew Mew marathon.

* * *

_Oh, Kaito-san! I told you, if I kiss you you’ll be under my control!_

_I don’t care, Mew Mew! I would do your bidding for as long as you wanted if it meant I could prove my love!_

_Oh, Kaito-san, I love you too!_

_Mew Mew, please, let me ki-_

Alphys turns off the TV, rubbing her head. Did she doze off? What time is it? 

She checks her phone, blinking at the brightness. All semblance of drowsiness is practically jolted out of her at the revelation that _it was midmorning already and the families would be here soon oh shit oh fu-_

Alphys has never run so fast in her life. She pushes her short legs harder than they have ever been pushed (that ever-present anime wannabe in her skull is crying out about reaching her **Full Power** ). She’s upstairs, shrugging on a clean lab coat, when she hears the first footsteps at the door.

God, these fast conveyor belts are lifesavers.

The footsteps belong to two dogs in armor. She’s seen them around Snowdin on her library trips, she thinks they’re sentries for the Royal Guard.

The male dog is carrying the body, while the female dog rests a hand on his shoulder. They lean forward and nuzzle noses- they must be a couple.

The male dog steps forward as soon as he spots her. “Alphys, right? Asgore said to… drop her off with you.”

“H-hi! Yes, that’s m-me. F-follow, me, p-please.”

As they ride down to the lower lab, Alphys learns that she’s talking to Dogamy and Dogaressa, married sentries around the Snowdin area. They’re dropping off Dogamy’s mother, Dogerella. 

“She was a sentry, too. Fell down when one of those humans dusted my dad.”

As much as Alphys loves the work of humans, it’s hard to ignore the pain that some of them wrought. One in particular had blasted through Hotland with a gun. She still remembers the day that schools were closed to protect kids from him. 

She gets Dogerella settled, thanks Dogamy and Dogaressa, and sees them off.

Next through the doors is an Aaron, holding someone who looks like him but with a dark blue tail. 

“Hey, girl. This is Chris ;). He is- was- my bro.”

Aaron doesn’t say anything else, and she doesn’t ask. Chris is put in the row below Dogerella, and Aaron winks his way back to Waterfall.

Greater Dog and Lesser Dog come in together. Greater Dog is carrying two other dogs. These guys aren’t very talkative- she isn’t even sure if they _can_ talk- but she leads them downstairs anyway, settling the bodies she’s nicknamed Least Dog and Greatest Dog next to Dogerella.

Shyren is next, hiding her face as she peeks in the door. She's carrying her sister in her fins. Alphys remembers the two of them well, how they would sing together in Waterfall. Their little concerts stopped the day the sister fell down.

Shyren seems even more skittish than usual, so Alphys lets her say goodbye to her sister and leave. This leaves Alphys to carry the body down on her own and place it next to Chris.

Two Snowdrake flutter in next. The larger one is carrying the body, while the kid who’s presumably his son hovers a bit behind.

“Wow, dad, this place is pretty e **LAB** orate.”

Alphys snorts a little bit, but the father looks unamused.

The Snowdrake accompanies his wife down to the bed next to Shyren’s sister. His son stays upstairs.

Next, a Whimsalot and a Final Froggit arrive simultaneously. The Whimsalot looks characteristically stoic as it carries its fallen brethren. Final Froggit drops its passenger off and hops away before Alphys can even greet it.

These two get the next row of beds. She tries to give the Whimsalot a moment to say goodbye, but it says that it’s made its peace. She doesn’t push any more than that. 

A few more dogs come through. A Moldbygg stops by, leaving to preserve its personal space as soon as the body’s passed off. There are others, including a Vegetoid and an Astigmatism, but by then she’s so drained that she’s just going through the motions.

Finally, it’s over. She’s standing alone on the top floor of her lab, trying to figure out what to do with her evening.

Going down and looking at row after row of fallen monsters didn’t really appeal right now, so she writes her entry for the day and goes to bed.

_**Entry Number 6: Asgore asked everyone outside the city for monsters that had "fallen down." Their bodies came in today. They're still comatose... And soon, they'll all turn into dust. But what happens if I inject "determination" into them? If their SOULS persist after they perish, then... Freedom might be closer than we all thought.** _


	8. Entry Numbers 7 & 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'A vessel to wield seven souls.' How much more anime can this get?

Since Alphys has so many test subjects, she’s decided to experiment a little with the DT dosages she’s going to be using. She’s chosen to give the dogs the smallest dosage, then give Chris, Moldbygg, and Shyren’s sister the next smallest. Final Froggit, Whimsalot, and Astigmatism get slightly more, while two Vegetoids, a Moldsmal, and the Snowdrake will get the most.

She’s going to dose them weekly and monitor them daily. It’s basically a waiting game- she has to have her containment tubes ready at all times for the moment the first subjects dust.

And it’s clear that all of them are close. It may look at first glance like they’re all sleeping, especially tucked into these beds… but another look is all it takes to see how sunken and sallow they look, how their chests barely rise and fall anymore. 

They’re not going to be here very long, and who knows how well the DT will preserve their souls. Alphys may only have a second or two to contain the souls after the bodies dust.

Whatever. She only needs seven of them to stay intact. As long as Asgore ends up with seven souls to wield, this will be a success. She’s prepping the syringes now. 

But Asgore can’t wield the souls, can he? One of the first things monster kids learn about souls is that, “Okay, kids, remember: a human can’t take a human soul, just like a monster can’t take a monster soul. Imagine how much more powerful humans would be if they could take each others’ souls! Oh no, I didn’t mean to scare you, stop crying, no super-humans will get you-”

Asgore's a monster. He can't use the power of the monster souls. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no! How could she make such a major oversight? Well, because she isn’t actually a soul expert, that’s how. She knew something like this would happen, something that would ruin all her progress. _This is what happens when you’re a fake. An imposter. A liar._

She stares at the syringe still clutched in her shaking gloves. Red determination glints back at her. For a moment, she considers injecting it into herself, clutching at any measure of confidence…

No. Too dangerous. There’s a reason she’s testing it on fallen monsters, not living ones.

She can’t be rash, she can’t freak out. There has to be a loophole.

But right now, she has to focus on the task at hand. The syringes are prepped, and the show must go on.

* * *

She monitors the fallen monsters very closely for the first hour after injection. There’s no difference in any of them, which would be discouraging if she wasn’t already having a background freakout about _the viability of her whole goddamn plan_.

Part of her wonders if this is the beginning of the end of her time as Royal Scientist. Okay, Alphys, you gave it a nice little try, but now we need someone who actually _knows what she’s doing_.

God, if determination is really the will to live, she wishes she could summon some of it right now.

But wait. Determination is the will to live. The pure, condensed power to push forward- past pain, past enemies, past death. 

If a monster can take in determination, the way these test subjects just did, without immediately dusting, who’s to say something else can’t take it too?

Something neither human nor monster, able to wield the souls of both.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 7: We'll need a vessel to wield the monster SOULs when the time comes. After all, a monster cannot absorb the SOULs of other monsters. Just as a human cannot absorb a human SOUL... So then... What about something that's neither human nor monster?** _

* * *

She takes a break from her monitoring duties to take a bit of a walk.

For most people, walking around Hotland would be a hot, sweaty, miserable kind of experience. For Alphys, a) she’s a lizard, heat is fine with her, and b) she’s already sweaty enough that a little more won’t make much of a difference.

Somehow, she ends up in the CORE. The work of the last Royal Scientist.

At the beginning, she’d thought that they would be someone to live up to… but she's since realized that no one remembers them, and they were obviously into some shady business with their secret codes that only creepy skeletons seem to understand.

Maybe being a Royal Scientist is just a condemnation to madness and falling between the cracks of time. Maybe someday people will remember her as little as they remember her long-gone predecessor.

She doesn't know if that oblivion would be comforting or terrifying.

By now, she’s in New Home. Maybe she should tell Asgore about all her thoughts on vessels, get his opinion. 

Yeah. That’s a good ~~distraction~~ plan.

She hovers in the throne room’s entrance for a good few minutes before working up the courage to stride inside and greet…

No one. There’s no Asgore, just the chirping of birds and the wind through the flowerbeds.

The flowers are a beautiful blanket of living gold. The king tends them well, and they're all healthy and vibrant. What a peaceful room...

_Wounded, Asriel stumbled home. He entered the castle and collapsed. His dust spread across the garden._

These flowers have been a part of so much history. They almost killed the king. They did kill the fallen human. 

Then they were covered in the prince’s dust.

And with that thought, an idea comes to her, all at once.

The prince wanted to acquire the souls to break the barrier, right? So why not let him do that (symbolically, of course). There’s a reason monsters scatter dust on the deceased’s favorite item- it’s said that the ritual allows the monster to live on in the thing they cared about most before they dusted.

If she can find one of the flowers that was sprinkled with Asriel’s dust and inject it with determination…

Well, if a functioning vessel comes out of it, it will be almost like the prince succeeded in his plan, and got to wield seven souls against the barrier.

Almost like she’s repaying the king for all the secrets she’s keeping from him by giving his son a second chance, a second life.

She finds the largest flower, the one in the center of the garden, uproots it, and stows it in her lab coat. She takes some other flowers as well, for good measure.

It feels good to have a real plan again.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 8: I've chosen a candidate. I haven't told Asgore yet, because I want to surprise him with it... In the center of his garden, there's something special. The first golden flower, that grew before all the others. The flower from the outside world. It appeared just before the queen left. I wonder... What happens when something without a SOUL gains the will to live?** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's strange to be writing about hopeful 'I have a plan' Alphys when I know that pretty soon I'm gonna have to write about how those plans come crashing down around her.


	9. Entry Number 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting.

She fills the mirror room in the lower lab with pots of flowers. Most of them are control cases against which to compare the potential vessel.

Then she injects the vessel with determination.

* * *

For the first week, absolutely nothing changes. The fallen monsters stay comatose. The vessel stays a regular old flower.

Somehow, when she pictured all this, she imagined faster results. She’d inject some determination into the bodies, and a few days later the souls would be ready and the barrier would be broken. The Underground would be free, and she’d be a hero. She’d have even more die hard fans than Mettaton. Asgore would be so impressed that he’d beg for her hand in marria-

Okay, maybe not quite that. But she’d expected more to happen!

So far, it’s been a whole lot of nothing.

* * *

The second week brings refreshed confidence. It has to happen now. She’s injected the second round of determination, and the monsters can’t last much longer.

On top of that, a trip to Waterfall yields the greatest gem in any treasure chest, greater by far than anything she’s ever found before.

_Mew Mew Kissy Cutie Volume 2_

She knew it existed- the DVD for Volume 1 had a teaser trailer for 2 at the end. Finding anime sequels in order is rare, and why would any human in their right mind throw away something like Mew Mew Kissy Cutie? This is the luckiest find she’s had in ages.

Yep, this week is looking up.

* * *

The third week dawns gray. The monsters still haven’t dusted. The flower is still just a flower.

Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 was the worst possible followup to Mew Mew 1. Honestly, it’s like they took Mew Mew’s Volume 1 character arc and reversed everything! Mew Mew is back to abusing her power, like all of that positive development never happened!

Alphys doesn’t have much hope as she administers the weekly doses to everyone. Even Mew Mew isn’t helpful anymore. What a sobering revelation.

* * *

Guess who didn’t dust last week? The fallen monsters, that’s who.

On top of that, not only is the flower still just a _little golden freaking flower_ , but it’s starting to _wilt_ , too.

It’s probably a metaphor for her confidence. 

Alphys administers new doses and sits down to watch for any change.

* * *

Week five! Yay!

Well, she can scratch pretending to be excited off of the Things That Might Make Me Hopeful Again list.

The only almost-good news of week four came towards the end, when Mettaton called for the first time in who-knows-how-long.

Apparently, being the only famous person in the Underground is very time consuming.

_”I’M FILMING 24/7, DARLING! MY FANS ARE BEAUTIFUL, BUT IT DOES SEEM SOMETIMES LIKE NO AMOUNT OF MY WONDERFUL FACE IS ENOUGH FOR THEM!”_

He also asks about his body, again. Something frustrated and exhausted and spiteful in the back of her head tells her to hang up, and she listens.

The next round of determination gets administered. It’s muscle memory by now.

* * *

Week five was just as much of a dud as the weeks before. On to week six.

Week six. The arrival of her first impatient voicemail.

_Hey, this is Dogamy. Asgore gave me your number. Where’s my mom’s dust? We pulled her old axe out for the funeral, but we don’t have anything to sprinkle on it. She should be dust by now, right?_

That’s what Alphys thought, too. They should all be dust by now.

* * *

Monsters still not dusted? Check.

Flower still a flower? Check.

More confused, almost angry voicemails? Double check.

The first is from Dogamy, again. Same deal, asking what she’s doing and why it’s taking so long.

The second is from Aaron.

_Hey, Alphys, girl ;). Just hittin’ you up to ask about Chris. What’s the deal with him ;)? Has he dusted yet or nah ;)?_

She doesn’t answer either of them.

* * *

She really isn’t surprised when the seventh week dawns with absolutely no change.

She’s a little over halfway through her supply of determination at this point. 

She administers the seventh doses. Maybe this will finally be the week.

* * *

It wasn’t. This week probably won’t be, either. What else is there to say?

_**ENTRY NUMBER 9: things aren't going well. none of the bodies have turned into dust, so i can't get the SOULs. i told the families that i would give them the dust back for the funerals. people are starting to ask me what's happening. what do i do?** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short update. This chapter was easy to write because I did it while frustrated about a project that's been taking a long time.


	10. Buttercups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flowers, everywhere.

Alphys is just going through the motions at this point. Wake up, check on the monsters, water the vessel.

To pass the time, she’s started trying everything she can to make the vessel exhibit some sign, _any sign_ that it’s not just a flower anymore. She puts it in low light, in high light, in the humid shower and the cold fridge room and the dry hallway. 

She tries anything and everything she can, but at the end of every day, when she looks at the vessel next to control flower after control flower, she can see no distinction between them.

It feels so hopeless, especially when she has to set the vessel down and then go back to her subjects and see them no closer to dusting than they were two months ago.

And so it repeats.

Today, she’s sitting with the controls, staring at them. If she can just find one single difference besides slight wilting or discoloration, she can continue her work with more confidence. Anything at all would work, at this point.

By the time she’s done, sticky seeds cover her sleeves and she’s copied down countless identical flowers into her notebook.

It’s probably no use. If there hasn’t been a change in eight damn weeks of experimentation, there’s probably never going to be one.

* * *

One of the only upsides to this mess with the vessel is that the flowers make her lab absolutely beautiful (god save her, she’s starting to sound like Mettaton).

Well, it used to be an upside, at least.

Now, just stepping into this beautiful, gold dappled, spring scented room is enough to have anxious sweat crawling down her back. The sight and smell of golden flowers is just a reminder that her decision to get all deep and symbolic choosing a vessel might be the reason this all fails.

She should have picked something sturdier, something with more of a mind.

It’s probably because of all that time with Mettaton on his farm before he had a body that the first thing that comes to mind is a snail. Not monsters or humans, just little mollusks. Technically intelligent life, but barely.

She imagines stuffing seven souls into a very determined snail and throwing it at the barrier, and she laughs for the first time this week.

But the humor can't last long. She has to get back to work.

* * *

It’s in the ninth week that Alphys thinks she sees some change in the vessel.

She’s doing her daily water and check routine when she notices… it seems to be taller, stand up straighter.

Maybe the determination is finally, _finally_ having an effect.

Or maybe it’s just growing, as plants tend to do. 

Her mental deliberation is cut off by her phone ringing in her pocket. It's not Mettaton or Asgore, so she doesn't answer it. Now that so many of the families have her number... it's not safe to answer the phone for unknown callers.

Besides, she doesn't have time for calls. She has a an _oh so important_ flower to babysit.

* * *

Doing this work without distractions is so very tedious. It’s examine all of the bodies for any sign of dust, then water and examine the flower, then examine the bodies again, then get some chisps, then examine the flower again, then examine the bodies, etc.

At first, mixing it up with the flower made things sort of interesting again, but that didn’t work, and she’s back to trudging back and forth, wondering if this will finally be the day.

It never is, but she can’t let that get to her.

What will it even look like, if the flower starts to get vessely? Will she even be able to notice the first signs? Will it become fully sentient, or just strong enough to hold souls, or neither?

At least with the bodies, she knows the first signs of dusting to look for. With this flower, she's flying in the dark.

Here’s to hoping the flower does something obvious like sprout a face and start talking.

* * *

It's gotten so bad that visiting Asgore in person and walking into that throne room filled with golden goddamn flowers has nervous sweat trickling down her spine and forehead. Visits to New Home were pretty much her only excuse for leaving the lab, and without that she doesn't have any real reason to abandon her work for more than a few minutes at a time. The last time she visited Waterfall was when she found Mew Mew 2. And she refuses to think about Mew Mew 2 more than she absolutely has to.

She doesn't even leave the lower lab very often anymore- she sleeps next to the fallen monsters so she'll be less likely to miss a dusting, and she eats chisps from the vending machine. Thank god for magical restocks.

When she skips her scheduled in-person meeting with Asgore, she gives the excuse that she couldn't get away from the lab. _Everything's just so close to succeeding, after all!_

She doesn't want to lie, but what choice does she have when the truth is just so pathetic?

* * *

Today, about halfway into the tenth week, Alphys wakes up filled with impatience. She skips the morning check on the fallen monsters and heads straight for the vessel.

She lines all the control flowers up on the counter. She carefully uproots each one and diagrams every little part, down to the fibers of the roots and the tiniest veins on the leaves. She does the same for the vessel.

This is the most thorough comparison she’s ever done. By the time she’s finished there’s dirt caked onto her hands and under her claws, a layer of seeds on her sleeves (and even some stuck between her scales), and sweat everywhere. She makes every observation and comparison she possibly can.

And it just makes her all the more certain that nothing it happening.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 10: experiments on the vessel are a failure. it doesn't seem to be any different from the control cases. whatever. they're a hassle to work with anyway. the seeds just stick to you, and won't let go…** _


	11. Entry Number 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can't let him abandon her. She can't be alone.

It’s the beginning of the eleventh week, and Alphys’ phone is ringing. It's annoying but not surprising, since it’s about time for her bi-monthly call from Mettaton. He's about the only person she can pick up the phone for without real anxiety anymore.

Sure enough, as soon as she picks up, the speakers absolutely boom with his voice. “ALPHYS. I NEED YOUR HELP.”

Alphys really can't tell if this is serious or not. Did he somehow damage his invincible metal body? Or does he just want to rant about _"the ABYSMAL state of the entertainment industry in this godforsaken place"?_

“Y-yeah? What c-can I help y-you with?”

“ONE OF MY FANS ASKED IF THEY COULD HAVE SOME MTT MERCHANDISE, AND I WOULD LOVE TO BE ABLE TO GIVE DEVOTED FANS A LITTLE PIECE OF ME (IN THE FORM OF EASILY MANUFACTURABLE MEMORABILIA, OF COURSE). THE PROBLEM IS THAT, WELL, I’M NOT THE TYPE TO GET HIS HANDS DIRTY MAKING KNICKKNACKS!”

“O-oh! S-so you w-want me t-to help you d-design m-m-merch, and, uh s-stuff!”

“EXACTLY RIGHT, DARLING. INVENTING AND DESIGNING AND WHATNOT WAS ALWAYS YOUR AREA OF EXPERTISE.” 

“Y-yeah, h-haha-”

“AND ANYWAY, DARLING, YOU’VE BEEN SO COOPED UP IN YOUR LAB LATELY! YOU COULD PROBABLY USE A PROJECT THAT YIELDS SOME IMMEDIATE RESULTS!” Damn. He really knew her too well.

“P-probably. Wh-what did you have in m-mind?”

By the end of the night, their list of ideas includes everything from food with Mettaton’s square face on it to more Alphys-driven suggestions like ‘anime powder’ and ‘bishie cream’. 

_”I-it could be l-like a beauty line! T-there could even b-b-be something like_ MTT Brand Beauty Yoghurt _or s-something, h-haha.”_

Then the phone call began to come to a close.

“BEFORE YOU GO, DARLING, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MY BODY?”

“Wh-what do you m-mean?”

“WELL, DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT YOU HAD SOMETHING STARTED? YOU HAVEN’T UPDATED ME IN _WEEKS_ , SWEETHEART!”

Alphys doesn’t know what to say, so she hangs up without saying anything.

* * *

They never see each other in person anymore. He’s almost always writing or filming or marketing something now, and she can’t leave her lab for long periods of time in case the fallen monsters dust without her (nevermind the fact that it’s been almost three months since the experiment started and still there’s no sign of that happening yet).

It’s also been a few weeks since he stopped trying to get her to be in the studio audience for one of his live things, and the last time she invited him to a movie or anime night was… god, it was before she got this job.

After that first discussion of the product line ended so awkwardly, neither of them have brought it up again. Now, whenever he calls, he cuts straight to talking about his body.

Talking on the phone is quickly becoming one of her least favorite activities. She never really loved it in the first place, but now the only people who call her are Asgore (usually asking for progress reports), the families of the fallen monsters (getting increasingly agitated about the dust they should have received weeks ago), or Mettaton, asking about his body.

None of those things are things she likes talking about. She doesn’t pick up the phone very often anymore.

She only picks it up for Mettaton on the off chance that they’ll talk the way they used to- as in, _not about whether she’ll ignore her actual work to build him a body_.

Why can’t they just go back to how they were?

* * *

Once it becomes clear that Mettaton pretty much just wants his second body at this point, Alphys decides it’s best to just do it. She brings her tools and workbench down to the dorm room and gets to work while she waits for the test subjects to do something, anything.

She sits down and starts working on a faceplate.

Mettaton’s only solid guidelines for the appearance of his real body were a list of synonyms for ‘beautiful’. He wants to be handsome, and how she gets him there is mostly up to her.

So of course, she went bishounen. Sharp features, big eyes, dramatic black hair.

Alphys gets halfway through before she actually looks at it. Mettaton’s going to be wearing this face, expressing with it. He’ll have a real face, not just an LED screen or big, sad ghost eyes.

What if the first thing he does with it is sneer at her, dismiss her? He’ll finally be able to roll his eyes at her stutter and look down an actual nose at her. He’s got more important things to worry about than her now. What if all this body will do is let him express that?

Anxious sweat crawls down her back. For the first time in ages, checking the fallen monsters is a welcome distraction.

* * *

Week fifteen. Almost four months since all of this started.

Mettaton calls right on schedule. The only thing that isn’t on schedule is his abrupt transition from asking about her experiments to asking about his body.

Alphys hanging up as soon as that happens isn't on schedule, either. 

She feels horrible whenever she hangs up on him. She knows it’s not right, that she should at least talk to him about how uncomfortable just thinking about his body makes her these days.

She punishes herself with work on the aforementioned body. She hasn’t touched the faceplate since she left it half-finished a week or so ago. It only has one eye, and the hair is unstyled.

Once she finishes that, once he has his perfect beautiful face, he’ll finally stop asking about it.

_Or he’ll never talk to you again._

This is it. One of the last steps in their plan.

_The final step is going to be him **abandoning** you._

Mettaton won’t abandon her. He’s her friend.

_Your only friend, and only friends with you because you can build him his dream body. Once he leaves you, you’ll have no one._

No. She knows he’s her friend, no matter whether she’s building his body or not. They’ll stay friends. He’s just busy right now, so he only has time to talk about his body. She’ll always have him.

Besides. He’s done just as much for her as she’s doing for him. She wouldn’t have this job right now if he hadn’t held up his end of the deal so beautifully, done such a good job convincing Asgore that he has fabricated soul.

_He wants something from you. The **moment** he gets it, you’ll be alone with your failed experiments._

Maybe she should just hold off on the body until her DT experiments are done. Make sure he sticks around at least until she succeeds or fails. Just to be safe.

_Don’t let him abandon you._

As she packs up Mettaton EX’s metal skeleton and faceplate, she notices for the first time how sweaty she is. Just looking at his half-finished body makes her feel so… gross.

* * *

Alphys wakes up to her phone ringing. She fumbles blindly for it, simultaneously feeling around for her glasses. Someone calling at such an odd hour… it’s probably Asgore, finally getting fed up of her utter lack of progress, or another one of the family members asking what’s going on with the dust they’ve been waiting for for weeks.

On a whim, and against her better judgement, she answers.

“ALPHYS, DARLING, THERE YOU ARE! I WAS WONDERING IF I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO LEAVE A VOICEMAIL.”

He sounds vaguely annoyed, and that annoys Alphys in return.

“W-well, I was asleep, l-like any normal person wou-would be at _3:30 in the m-morning._ ” Groggily, she wipes the sleep out of her eyes and straightens her glasses onto her face.

Mettaton’s too-loud voice pipes from her phone a moment later. “WELL, I WAS CHARGING, THINKING ABOUT THINGS, AND I HAD A BIT OF AN EPIPHANY.”

And then he stops talking. She knows what he wants her to do. _”I always have to be the one inciting the tantalized questions of my audience, holding them in suspense, dangling hints only to dramatically pull away the answers! That’s showbiz, darling!”_ For a second, she considers not humoring him. 

But if she doesn’t humor him, who knows how long this conversation will be.

“W-what was your idea, M-mettaton?”

“OH, I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED!” Wow, he really _barely_ let her finish her sentence. “YOU SEE, GORGEOUS, THE LAST TIME I CALLED, THE SOULS WERE STILL FIRMLY IN THE BODIES OF THEIR TRAGICALLY UNRESPONSIVE HOSTS!”

Another pause. She thought that when he got his dream and started acting full time, he might be able to tone down the everyday dramatics. Evidently, the opposite has happened.

“Y-yes, M-mettat-”

“AND SINCE THE BARRIER REMAINS INTACT, I THINK IT’S SAFE TO ASSUME NO MORE PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE- CORRECT, DARLING?”

“T-that’s right.”

“AH, INDEED! ANYWAY, AS I WAS CHARGING, I CAME TO THE REALIZATION THAT IT MIGHT BE QUITE A WHILE BEFORE THOSE POOR MONSTERS… PASS ON.”

He pauses for a moment, but it’s not one of his ‘keep egging me on’ pauses, it’s more a ‘this is a good dramatic break’ pause.

“AND WHAT SHOULD YOU FILL THAT TIME WITH, DARLING? WELL, IT’S GORGEOUS- DARE I SAY _FABULOUS_ \- AND IT’S CURRENTLY SITTING IN YOUR LAB, ITS BEAUTIFUL WORKMANSHIP COLLECTING DUST!”

Not again. She's getting so tired of how their calls always, _always_ loop back to this.

“M-mettaton, they c-could still dust any m-minute! I c-can’t just work on s-something else right n-now. Please, p-please stop b-bugging me ab-about this.”

“WELL. WELL, THEN. I THINK I MUST GET GOING. TOODLES!”

She’s usually the one to hang up on him, so _getting_ hung up on... it's almost funny.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 11: now that mettaton's made it big, he never talks to me anymore. ... except to ask when i'm going to finish his body. but i'm afraid if i finish his body, he won't need me anymore... then we'll never be friends ever again. ... not to mention, every time i try to work on it, i just get really sweaty…** _


	12. Entry Numbers 12 & 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months. No changes.
> 
> Yet.

Alphys holds a sad little ‘celebration’ on the first day of the sixth month of this godforsaken experiment. _It’s an anniversary!_

She goes down to the TV room and puts in Mew Mew 1 (Mew Mew 2 is _not_ canon to Alphys, no matter whether the studio says it is or not). She makes herself some instant noodles, a great break from the popato chisps she’s been subsisting on for so long, and settles in for the night.

_Mew Mew! Thank god, you’re alive! I thought those scary people got you!_

_They almost did… They know about my kiss, and it didn’t work on them!_

_But that means you can’t make them stop whatever they’re doing! What will we do?_

_I’m sure if I train hard I can make my kiss strong enough to tear down their defenses! I just need to double down, and it has to work!_

This early in the show, Mew Mew hasn’t yet given any thought to the ramifications of just mind-controlling her problems away. Strengthening her kiss works, but it ends up giving her more power than she can responsibly wield, leading to a series of slightly comical disasters and the revelation that her kisses can’t be used lightly. It’s some of the best character development anywhere, and they completely ruined it in the second Mew Mew with that trash plotline about ‘learning to accept and work with her abilities’. That’s not how anything works and no one should be comfortable wielding power over others like that-

Okay, calm down Alphys. This is supposed to be a ‘try to be less sad about the failure that is my job’ night, not a fangirl rage night.

Watching Mew Mew’s training sequence montage, complete with peppy J-pop, makes her think about the merits of just… doubling down, increasing the DT dosages, and trying to fast-track this whole thing.

No, she can’t. She can’t risk the integrity of the experiment like that. She has to stay calm, controlled. 

This isn’t the time for rash decisions.

* * *

The anime night actually sort of makes Alphys feel worse. She wakes up the next morning after a good night’s sleep and thinks about all the work she should have been doing last night. She shouldn’t be taking breaks. 

She takes her time cleaning the TV room up, then does her morning checks.

In the beginning, her checks involved checking every part of every body, rolling them over and lifting their eyelids and checking under their hair for any trickles of dust starting to come loose. Now she just goes down the rows, glancing at each one. 

She doesn’t even bother with the flower today.

* * *

Another week passes, and then another. By now, Asgore’s calling almost daily with concerns, both his own and from the families. She also gets a few voicemails a day from various family members (even _Shyren_ has mustered up the impatient confidence to call her once, and Shyren’s even more reclusive than Alphys).

What is she supposed to say? _”Yeah, I have no idea what’s going on either. Beats me!”_

Asgore must be so disappointed. She would be disappointed, too.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 12: nothing is happening. i don't know what to do. i'll just keep injecting everything with "determination." i want this to work.** _

* * *

Predictably, the next week yields no results. Alphys has her container of DT and her syringes, and it’s time to start a new week of waiting and hoping and coming to terms with the fact that this probably won’t ever work.

Watching the red trail of DT dissipate under the subjects’ skin is as mesmerizing as always, but no longer sends the thrill of hope through her that it used to. She knows now that it doesn’t mean much in terms of results.

She moves on to the flower. She’s relocated the pot to her DT room so that she doesn’t have to walk back and forth. She’s stopped injecting the determination directly into the flower’s stem. It’s easier to just pour it into the soil.

Red crawls up the flower’s stem a moment later, radiating out across its leaves and petals. Once again, mesmerizing but no longer exciting.

Day 1, just as much of a dud as every other day so far.

Week 28 Day 2 Log:

Waterfall Monsters: No dust  
CORE Monsters: No dust  
Snowdrake: No dust  
Vegetoids: No dust  
Dogs: Thought I saw dust under Greatest Dog. Just shed fur.  
Moldsmal: No dust  
Flower: It’s still a flower

Week 28 Day 3 Log:

Waterfall Monsters: No dust  
CORE Monsters: No dust  
Snowdrake: No dust  
Vegetoids: No dust  
Dogs: No dust. More fur. I think I might be allergic.  
Moldsmal: No dust  
Flower: Nope

Week 28 Day 4 Log:

Waterfall Monsters: Must have accidentally moved Shyren’s sister yesterday. She was on her side, fins all spread out. No dust, though.  
CORE Monsters: No dust  
Snowdrake: no  
Vegetoids: no  
Dogs: No dust. Definitely allergic.  
Moldsmal: no  
Flower: lmao nah

Week 28 Day 5 Log:

Waterfall Monsters: Dust? No  
CORE Monsters: no  
Snowdrake, vegetoids, moldsmal, etc.: all no  
Dogs: nah :(  
dammit i’m sneezxing eww  
Flower: oh my gosh is that a magical vessel? haha no it’s a sad flower

Day 6. Inspection time. 

The monsters she’s grouped together as ‘Waterfall monsters’ include Chris, Shyren’s sister, and Moldbygg. Apparently, she keeps forgetting to make sure Shyren’s sister is arranged on her back after inspections, because the body is _always_ in a different pose for her daily checks now. Nothing else is out of the ordinary, though.

The CORE monsters- Final Froggit, Whimsalot, and Astigmatism- are the same as they usually are. Grim, pale, and comatose. No dust.

The Snowdrake also looks pretty normal. Breathing shallowly, wings limp at her sides. 

Then Alphys notices her eyelids. They’re shifting.

Breath caught in her throat, Alphys leans closer, watching the Snowdrake’s eyes dance. It’s like she’s dreaming, which should _not_ be happening. Fallen monsters don’t dream, they lay there until they dust.

She’s puzzling over it (what could it mean? what's changed?), stuck between worry and excitement and pure confusion when the Snowdrake’s eyes snap open, wide and blue and frantic.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 13: one of the bodies opened its eyes.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yayyy we're getting into the fun stuff
> 
> oh wait did i say fun stuff i meant the opposite of that


	13. Entry Numbers 14 & 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they're all awake.

Snowdrake is understandably confused. She spends the next few minutes trying to find a way out, while Alphys spends the next few minutes trying to talk her down and explain the situation.

_”Where am I? Where is my family?”_

She’s especially frantic when Alphys lets slip that it’s been almost seven months since she was brought down here, and even longer since she fell.

_”You can’t keep me here! Let me see my husband and son!”_

Eventually, Alphys manages to convince her to at least stay for a physical exam. Alphys is reeling as she gets Snowdrake to lie down on one of the surgical tables and looks her over. She’s thin, which is to be expected for someone whose magic has barely kept her alive for so long, but otherwise seems… fine. Somehow.

Snowdrake tries to get up from the table, but she’s exhausted from her panic attack earlier, and weak enough that she barely makes it back to her bed before she falls asleep.

Normal sleep. Not the near-death coma she’s been in, but real sleep. And the more Alphys looks at the others, the clearer it’s becoming that they’re not quite comatose anymore either.

_What’s going on???_

She’s making her third round when the Moldsmal wakes up. She can only tell because it starts doing that odd wiggle Moldsmals always seem to be doing. Its burbling is frequent enough that she can tell it’s stressed (of course it is, who wouldn’t be?). 

And then all hell breaks loose.

She’s _never_ had to shut down the elevator before. Nothing unwanted has ever tried to get in or out of the lower lab. But suddenly there’s a veritable herd of frantic ~~subjects~~ ~~bodies~~ monsters running and flying and hopping for the exits.

The CORE monsters make the fastest break for it. The dogs get excited that everyone else is excited, and they run around in a pack of fur and slobber. Shyren’s sister wedges herself into the corner. Chris follows her- _Hey girl, I bet your smile could brighten this whole Lab ;)_.

By the time Alphys manages to get everyone reasonably calm, she feels exhausted enough to fall down herself. Getting the confused monsters in an orderly line to get examined is even harder.

The conclusion is that except for the obvious deterioration of being comatose for anywhere between months and years, everyone is completely healthy.

Most of the monsters need to sleep immediately. She gets chisps for the rest and tries to keep them calm by answering their questions.

Eventually, the fallen monsters are all tired enough to rest.

Alphys is… confused. And faintly happy? But mostly, coming to terms with the fact that _the impossible just happened_. 

She needs to sleep.

* * *

When she wakes up the next morning and sees Shyren’s sister up and in the corner, she practically has a panic attack before she remembers what happened yesterday. She's barely managed to calm down when she feels something brushing her shoulder and jumps.

“Are you alright? I was just about to wake you up.” Snowdrake. She looks concerned, and that makes Alphys want to laugh. She almost does. The undead patients are worrying about the doctor. This whole situation is fucking hysterical.

“Y-yeah, I-I’m… fine. I-is everyone okay?”

“We’re as okay as we can be, but now that you’re awake… We want to see our families. I want to see my _son_. Please, let us go home.”

This was so far out of Alphys’ area of expertise. Hell, her areas of expertise were _robotics_ and _anime_ , and now she’s babysitting monsters that are essentially _undead_. How is this her life?

“C-can I j-just g-get ready, uh, and t-then m-maybe c-call Asgore?” She needs more time. She needs to stall.

“Yes, but please hurry.” Snowdrake looks so stressed and sad. What must be going through her head?

Alphys does genuinely want to help, but first, she wants to figure out what the hell happened.

As soon as Snowdrake leaves her alone, she looks around the room. Everyone is walking and talking (or doing whatever their various species’ version of talking is). Shyren’s sister is humming to herself. Chris is being creepy. The dogs have congregated into a pack. Astigmatism is… oh no, she should probably break that up.

Once she makes sure Astigmatism isn’t going to keep bullying the other CORE monsters, she manages to leave.

Basically, she flees into the hallway. As soon as she’s certain no one’s going to see her, she leans against the wall and lets herself slide down onto the tiles.

_What’s happening?_

_**ENTRY NUMBER 14: Everyone that had fallen down... ... has woken up. They're all walking around and talking like nothing is wrong. I thought they were goners...?** _

* * *

Alphys spends the rest of the day taking care of the monsters, then, once they’re all asleep, she heads up to her desk.

Those translated symbols have to be here somewhere…

Ah, yes. There.

_human soul essence extraction device_

_power present in every human soul_

_allows persistence of the soul after death_

Maybe if determination can make a soul linger past death… maybe it can also make a soul strong enough not to die in the first place. If determination can be considered the distilled will to live, injecting it into the subjects probably just gave their souls the strength to hold them together.

She should have known, honestly. She feels so stupid.

Time to channel that into a phone call.

A phone call to Asgore.

Here’s to hoping his Angry Disappointment Voice is just as hot as his normal one.

She sits down in her desk chair, holds the phone to her ear with one hand and taps at the desktop with the claws of her other.

”Howdy, Alphys! It’s wonderful to hear from you.” Yeah, because she nevers call him and doesn’t even talk to him in person anymore ~~because she’s terrified of being fired and evicted and-~~

“Uh, h-hi Asgore.”

“Do you have any news for me?” He sounds so expectant. She hopes he’s ready to be disappointed. _Again._

“Y-yes, actually. Um, I, um… th-the t-test subjects… the m-monsters… t-they all woke up.”

“Woke up? They’re alive?” She can’t read his voice at all, and it’s terrifying.

“Y-yeah, th-they’re walking a-around, and h-healthy, a-and ev-everything.”

“This is wonderful news! Alphys, you’ve saved them! Oh, I can’t wait to tell the families!”

He’s going to absolutely _kill_ her… wait, what?

“Y-yes, As-Asgore, but the experiment _f-failed_. I c-couldn’t make any n-new souls…”

“But you did something so much better. Another human will fall down here. Never before has a monster woken up after falling down. Doctor, you’re a hero.”

Asgore really was a dad at heart, always trying to make people feel better. And… maybe it was kind of working?

“Th-thanks, Asgore. But, uh, w-what should I d-do now?”

“Well, I know that this is quick of me, but… I’d really like to make sure the souls are secured.”

Right. The souls. She’d taken them periodically to replenish her DT supply, but then sort of… kept them? She’d been so terrified of going back to the castle that she just hadn’t ever returned them.

“Y-yeah, th-that’s sm-smart. I’ll b-bring them b-back t-tomorrow… I g-guess?” It feels so final. Once Alphys returns the souls, it’s really, really over.

“Anytime, as long as they come back safely and soon. When do you think the monsters will be ready to see their families again?”

“W-well, I want to.. to examine them f-for a-awhile longer. J-just to make sure they’re, uh, h-healthy. Th-then I’ll c-call their families and… p-probably release t-them on a case by c-case basis?”

“Better safe than sorry. Listen, Doctor, I know these last few months have been tense, but… I’m proud of you. Even your invention, the robot, has done something to be proud of! Everything seems to be looking up right now.”

It really does seem too good to be true.

* * *

The next morning is insane. The monsters are getting antsy again, but Alphys doesn’t have time to really calm them down because she has to spend the day walking back and forth to the castle with the souls.

She’s about to take the fourth soul back when she realizes how sweaty she is and stands in the mirror room to take a break. 

She stands in a sea of flowers. And realizes that… she doesn’t need these anymore, either. No souls, no vessel.

Now that she isn’t going to be stressing over the vessel, it might be nice to keep the controls. A room full of flowers is a cute idea.

But the so-called vessel can screw itself. She'll let it go be a useless flower in the throne room, where she doesn’t have to deal with it.

And that’s where she leaves it. Right where she found it. It’s grown a lot since she picked it, so it’s distinctly taller than the other flowers. 

Such a pretty, innocuous flower. To think it caused her so much stress and anxiety.

Alphys makes sure the king isn’t nearby, and flips the flower off before making her exit.

* * *

Calling the families is easy, for once. It’s so refreshing to give them good news. Of course, they all start out demanding and impatient, but the news has them all thanking her profusely. Some even get emotional.

_”Oh my god. Dogerella, did you hear that! Mom’s back!"_

_”Thanks, girl. You really are more than just a pretty face ;)”_

_”She’s okay? She wants to see us? Really?”_

It’s enough to make Alphys feel like maybe… sure, she didn’t do what she came to do, but maybe she actually did something better?

_**ENTRY NUMBER 15: Seems like this research was a dead end... But at least we got a happy ending out of it...? I sent the SOULS back to Asgore, returned the vessel to his garden... And I called all of the families and told them everyone's alive. I'll send everyone back tomorrow. : )** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! We've made it to a happy ending! Wow, I can't believe the journey's finally over!
> 
> haha jk i wish


	14. no.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> all wrong

Once every family has been called, Alphys tells the monsters that once she’s monitored them for a few days, they can go home. Some of them are excited and grateful, but one in particular is less than satisfied.

“Doctor, please. I was the first to wake up. I’m obviously _fine_. You have to let me go home.” Snowdrake. She grabs Alphys’ hand too quickly for her to pull away.

“I miss my family. You can’t keep me here against my will.”

“I’m s-sorry, but I have to m-make sure the DT hasn’t h-hurt you before you c-can l-leave.”

Snowdrake’s… palms? wings? whatever they are, they’re sticky with sweat. All of the ~~subjects~~ monsters have been pretty sweaty, probably from the physiological stress of waking up after so long and the psychological stress of being trapped in an unfamiliar lab.

Stress sweat. Alphys can relate.

“Just… please. Let me out soon.” Snowdrake’s voice is small and pleading. She’s been the most vocal of the monsters when it comes to a desire to escape, and now she just seems so desperate.

But Alphys has to be sure. She can’t have another failure on her hands because she was too careless to double, triple, quadruple check everything.

“Y-yes. S-soon. I’m s-sorry I c-can’t let you go n-now.”

Snowdrake won’t meet Alphys’ eyes, but she does release her grip on her hand before fluttering away.

All that’s left to do is sigh and glance at the clock.

It’s been a long, long day. She tells the monsters that she’s going to sleep and curls up in her temporary bed.

* * *

“-doctor, wake up.”

Alphys blinks up at the vague, blurry shape that woke her up. She pats the ground next to her until she feels her glasses, and fumbles them onto her snout.

Shyren’s sister is hovering over her. If Shyren’s sister has mustered up the courage to talk to her, something must be happening.

“W-what’s g-going on?”

“doctor... snowdrake feels sick. everyone’s sweating a lot.”

Damnit. Alphys is on her feet immediately.

Face to face with a congregation of monsters. Everyone is waiting right in front of her, a sea of anxious faces.

And, yeah, they all look pretty sweaty. Snowdrake is the only one not congregated with the others, because Snowdrake is lying on her side, looking even sweatier than the others.

This is really bad. The fact that one of the monsters she gave the most DT to is the most sick right now… something might be going wrong.

* * *

She gets the monsters lined up in the DT-room-turned-exam-room and gets three of them onto the tables.

She has to tell Chris to be quiet after she holds up his arm and he says, “Just can’t keep your hands off me, huh ;)?”

The first thing she notices is that the sweat doesn’t just seem to be in the form of the droplets sliding down him. His skin and scales are covered in a layer of it, and his fur is so wet that it’s completely smoothed down.

The same goes for Shyren’s sister and Greatest Dog. Hell, it’s like they’re melting or something.

Every monster she checks is roughly the same. She was worried that the level of sweatiness would correspond to the amount of determination the monster got… and her heart is sinking steadily into her stomach with every examination, because that seems to be exactly what’s happening.

She makes sure everyone has all the books and chisps they need, and hunkers down to monitor them.

* * *

It’s been what… eight hours? nine? of just watching the monsters go about their lives, trying to keep herself and everyone else from panicking.

“...could you let go of me?”

They’ve all been completely quiet this whole time, so hearing a voice has Alphys at attention. She looks over and sees… of course. Chris has his hand on Shyren’s sister’s shoulder, and he isn’t letting go. Moldbygg is bobbing behind Shyren’s sister, eldritch eyes watching Chris carefully.

“Ch-Chris, please l-let go of h-her-” Alphys stops talking when she sees his hand.

His fingers looked like they’ve been smashed and spread across Shyren’s sister’s shoulder. As she watches, they seem to be melding further with her scales, blending together…

Melting.

“I can’t let go! Seriously, man, I can’t!”

Chris is freaking out. He tries to yank his hand away, but just jerks Shyren’s sister towards him. She tries to pull away from him in turn, and topples back.

She falls right onto Moldbygg. They’re all freaking out- Chris is yelling, Moldbygg is _roaring_ , and Shyren’s sister has started shrieking frantic music notes. The rest of the monsters have gone stock still. 

And no one can tear their eyes away. Chris’ arm has melded to Shyren’s sister’s side, and the rest of him is melting against her. Her hair slowly drips down her neck as her face becomes more and more concave, until it collapses and pours down her sides. Moldbygg’s body is also contributing to the amorphous puddle under them. As Alphys watches, that puddle seems to shift and resolve itself into a vague tail under the… thing. It lifts Moldbygg’s dripping head and snarls at Alphys, Chris’ muscles flexing along its slimy sides.

Everyone freaks out. The CORE monsters huddle together. The dogs form a growling pack. Snowdrake’s mother presses herself into the corner, and the Vegetoids and Moldsmal burrow into the ground and gyrate aggressively, respectively.

Alphys tries to yell above the chaos, but suddenly the dogs are yelping at each other as their fur melts together. 

Astigmatism is shouting at the other CORE monsters as Whimsalot’s wings drip onto the ground and Final Froggit’s spine bends and twists into something unrecognizable.

Alphys runs from the room.

She can’t watch this. She can’t take it. She finds herself huddled in the TV room. Her breathing is out of control and her heartbeat is pounding in her ears but she _can’t calm down_.

She puts her hands to her face and sobs sharply into them. She doesn’t even know what’s going on, so how is she supposed to help? What is she supposed to do?

It’s an eternity before the tears run out. She can’t hear the chaos in the other room anymore, so she uncurls herself and walks into the hallway.

An empty monitor blinks in front of her. _Come on, Alphys. Be the_ Royal Scientist _, professional and smart, your procedures and notes displayed proudly on the walls for all to see._ The panic returns, crawling up her throat and _choking her_ until she can’t breathe.

Claws shaking, she writes the only thing she can think on the monitor.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 16: no No NO NO NO NO** _

As soon as it’s done, she moves straight back to the dorm room, refusing to look anywhere but the floor.

* * *

The dorm room is mostly empty. The only monsters left are the dogs. 

They’re in the corner. They’ve almost completely melded into a mass of fur and ears and paws. Greatest Dog’s upper body sticks up above all the others, and it sees her first.

As it reaches out with a pair of dripping paws, the half-melted faces of the other dogs start to turn towards her, yelping and whimpering. Greatest Dog whines at her, eyes wide and pained, and as she watches, its face seems to _collapse_ , caving backwards into its skull until all that’s left is a black hole. Something drips from the corner of that horrible void, and the mass of dogs starts shuffling silently away into the corner.

Alphys backs out of the room, not tearing her eyes away from that _thing_ for a second.

As soon as she reaches the mirror room, she hears something _drip-drip-dripping_. Did one of those monstrosities break a pipe? She looks down into the sea of flowers… and sees something white dripping from between the mirrors onto a puddle, spreading slowly across the floor.

Suddenly, the trickle becomes a stream, and the puddle seems to ripple outwards, ballooning and bubbling into another one of those _things_. It looks like a bird, but _wrong_ , so wrong, its wings contorted and twitching, and its single enormous eye twisting and shifting into a fanged, snapping mouth every few seconds. Its spindly legs seem about to snap. 

Alphys feels like vomiting when she realizes that that huge mouth-eye is _Astigmatism_ , and those awful, deformed wings are Final Froggit’s legs, and that those spindly lower limbs are Whimsalot’s.

Its beak (no, Astigmatism’s legs) doesn’t even move as it cries out a garbled mishmash of nonsense in three layered voices.

She runs again, runs back out into the hallway and away from everything, past the TV room and towards the DT machine- and suddenly, something lunges out of the shadows by the machine, growling at her.

It’s the Waterfall monsters. Moldbygg’s toothy mouth opens in another snarl. Chris’ arms twitch and flex, but they’re stuck to the sides of that sticky body and can’t seem to move.

She backs off, and the thing seems content to have some space (probably because of what’s left of Moldbygg and Shyren’s sister). It slinks away.

Her heart pounds in her throat. She wipes even more sweat from her brow. God, she’s sweating so much.

Or maybe she’s melting, too. It’s not like she doesn’t deserve it.

She stares out into the cold room in front of her. Dead end. She turns to leave, then spots a trembling shape in the corner.

Snowdrake sees Alphys just as Alphys sees Snowdrake. She flutters over.

“Please… Let me… go…”

She tries to grab Alphys’ hand, the way she did earlier, but her wing loses its structure and droops before she can. She shuffles closer, close enough that Alphys can see the grimly smiling faces where her eyes used to be. Her tongue lolls out of her mouth, just as white and dripping as the rest of her.

Alphys runs again.

* * *

She’s done fleeing, and she stands in front of another monitor.

She’s had a revelation, and it feels like it needs to be written down… but…

What’s the point in explaining herself? What good will it do? She wrote on these monitors to seem like she knew what she was doing. She definitely doesn’t know what she’s doing anymore.

Does she even deserve to explain herself, at this point?

She deletes the entry and moves on.

~~_**ENTRY NUMBER 17: monsters' physical forms can't handle "determination" like humans' can. with too much determination, our bodies begin to break down. everyone's melted together…** _ ~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well i've officially added 'body horror' to the tags because jeez


	15. Entry Number 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can't be in her lab right now, but where else is there to go?

Alphys can’t stay in the lab. 

Of course, the _right_ thing to do would be to take a deep breath, head back down, try to figure out what happened to each of the monsters, and catalogue who combined with who into which horrifying creature.

But she can’t. She really just can’t. The way those monsters had gone from walking and talking to melting and combining is _burned into her brain_ , playing on a deafening loop. 

_Greatest Dog reaches desperately for her as its face collapses back into its skull._

_Chris’ arms twitch, unable to unstick from that goopy mess of three combined bodies._

_Snowdrake begs to be let go as her face droops and contorts, mouths forming in her eyes and tongue dripping onto the floor._

_Astigmatism’s legs twitch back and forth like a beak, its eye tearing open into a pair of fanged, gnashing jaws._

She can see it, over and over. And if she goes back down there, she’ll have to face it all again.

Alphys leaves in a hurry, still wearing her sweat-soaked lab coat. She almost heads for Waterfall, to go distract herself by rooting through the dump, but then she remembers that Shyren and Aaron and all those Moldbyggs are waiting for her in Waterfall. God, a confrontation with them is exactly the opposite of what she needs right now.

_Hey, yeah, I can totally return your family members to you! You’ll just have to share. Because they’re stuck together in a horrifying mockery of the monsters they once were. Maybe you can alternate custody!_

She can't handle that.

The dogs are in Snowdin. Can’t go there. The CORE is a no go, too. Hotland is usually fine, but right now the narrow walkways and the burble of lava and the way her lab looms behind her are suffocating. The only option she can see right now is...

New Home, where Asgore lives. Shit.

There's just nowhere else to go. New Home is the best of her horrible options. 

She can always just have tea with Asgore and pretend everything is fine. Tell him the monsters just have to stay a for few more days while she finishes their checkups. _Add another lie to the pile._

Alphys heads for New Home. For the first time, Hotland feels genuinely uncomfortably hot. Apparently her lizard heritage doesn’t protect her from guilt-induced hyper-awareness of the lava all around her. 

She runs the distance from the doors of the Hotland Apartment Complex to the elevator- with the CORE so close by, any number of Monsters She Can’t Confront Right Now could be hanging around. 

The elevator ride is just so long. It gives her time to think, which gets her thinking about the monsters in her basement, confused and scared and probably in pain and it’s _all her fault, she did this to them, she basically tortured them and she can’t fix it._

She has to take a second before walking out into New Home, because it’s gotten hard to breathe again, and her eyes are blurry with tears.

* * *

She makes it to the throne room, and for once she doesn’t hesitate at the doorway. She wanders in, already trying to think of what to say…

And Asgore’s gone. The throne room is empty, save for the too-familiar flowers.

Alphys is alone, with thoughts that won’t shut up. 

She falls to her knees in the flowers and rips off her glasses and lets herself cry. What is there left to do? Eventually either Asgore will come back or she'll have to leave for her lab, because she can't stay here forever. As much as she'd like to leave those things to rot alone in her basement, she owes it to them to at least alleviate their suffering. _Or put them out of their misery._

Like it or not, she has a responsibility to these people, a responsibility to their families. And she refuses, absolutely _refuses_ , to continue to let everyone down. She honestly doesn't know what she would do if she were to fail again. Something rash, probably.

There isn’t any anime that could have prepared her for this. Mew Mew may have manipulated people, but she never created horrific amalgamations out of living beings. She never had to cover up a _crime against monsterkind_.

Because face it, Alphys has _no choice_ but to cover this up. This is more than just her job on the line now. She could lose quite literally everything, down to her freedom, if Asgore were to deem her crime severe enough.

She snaps her head up, staring at that stupid imposing throne through the haze of tears and the blur of not having her glasses. She thinks about how much is at stake, how much the owner of that throne could _absolutely destroy her_. 

And suddenly, she’s laughing, because the last time she was here in front of this throne, she was talking about making new souls and Asgore was calling her ‘doctor’ and congratulating her on all of her progress.

All that waiting, and reporting no findings back, and waiting some more. Back then, she was _so fucking desperate_ for something to happen. Well, something’s happened, all right! Congratulations to Alphys!

“W-would you be p-proud of me now, Asgore? N-now that I’ve gotten s-some _r-real results?_ ”

She stands up and wipes at her eyes.

“And- and you’ll n-never know, either. I’m g-going to l-lock the monsters in my basement, and th-then I’ll probably l-lock myself in my lab and w-watch anime and b-be sad on the p-paycheck y-you’re giving me.”

She replaces her glasses on her nose. Her voice is becoming gradually less hysterical, her breathing less and less frantic.

“Because t-that’s what I d-do. I’m g-gonna lie to y-you, and I’m gonna lie to the f-families. P-pretty soon, y-you’re going t-to hate me.” But they would hate her more if they knew what she's done. Letting them all resent her for being a liar and a shut in is better than being reviled as the mad scientist who turned people into experiments.

That’s the truth, and she has to face it. There are no tears left, and definitely no more laughter.

All she has left to give is quiet resignation.

She steps back and tears her eyes away from the throne, eyeing the flowers. Hell, even the flowers are a permanent reminder of her own incompetence. She looks at the spot where she planted the vessel, and…

Huh. That’s odd. The spot where that tall, healthy flower had been is now completely empty. Even more strangely, the dirt around it doesn’t seem disturbed at all.

She leans closer, looking confusedly at the spot where it was just a day or two ago. The dirt is packed down and slightly damp, except for a dry spot right in the middle.

Almost as though the vessel was just watered, then somehow disappeared without any disturbance to the soil.

Great. Add ‘may have created a sentient flower’ to the ever-growing list of Alphys’ wonderful accomplishments.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 18: the flower's gone.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like it's probably smart to make a content warning at this point, because this chapter is going to set the tone for the next few chapters, at least. the rest of this fic is gonna deal with depression, suicidal thoughts, and generally some dark moments, so be safe :)
> 
> i'll put more specific warnings on any esp dark chapters


	16. voicemail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard, but she's getting used to it. If only she'd never given Asgore and the families her phone number.

It’s another day before Alphys can make herself descend back down to the lower lab, and the amalgamation-things are just as horrific as she remembers.

It turns out that they aren’t hostile, at least. The dog-thing is just a horrifying looking dog, basically. The Waterfall monster conglomeration just wants to be left alone. Snowdrake is just sad and forgetting herself.

She also manages to make a definitive who’s-who list.

Chris, Moldbygg, and Shyren’s sister melted together into that lemon scented abomination. The dogs melted into one big, hellhound looking thing. The bird creature is made of Whimsalot, Final Froggit, and Astigmatism. Snowdrake’s mother didn’t meld with anyone. She’s just melting, and losing herself at an alarming rate.

For awhile, the Vegetoids and Moldsmal went unaccounted for, which was terrifying. _Did they escape? Was she doomed?_

Then, she encountered the final crimes against nature in her lab.

They were unrecognizable, wavering in and out at the edges and shrieking garbled static and dial-up tones.

There were three of them. It made a perverse sort of sense that the three monsters she’d given the most determination would be the most unrecognizable, but this… it’s like they’ve become something else entirely.

* * *

Two days have passed. Since cataloguing her new roommates, Alphys has learned some more about them, including that they still have to eat, that they still love popato chisps (and dog food, in the case of the dog thing), and that they get a lot scarier when they’re chasing her around for the food she’s holding.

She starts giving them names. They deserve real names, and just listing the names of the monsters they’re made of feels wrong.

The dog thing becomes Endogeny. Alphys pretty much just looks through a dictionary for cool words that sounded dog-related, and endogeny pops out as mysterious but not too ridiculous or punny.

The Waterfall amalgamate smells distinctly of lemons, so they get the name Lemon Bread.

The CORE bird-thing basically just looks like a creepy badass bird, so Alphys leans into her dramatic anime tendencies and names it Reaper Bird. What? It sounds cool and spooky!

Snowdrake stays Snowdrake. She’s still herself, just... deteriorating.

The unrecognizable former Vegetoids and Moldsmal also get a Cool Anime Name. They’re the Memoryheads, and they really freak Alphys out, so she doesn’t stick around long after coming up with the name.

* * *

It’s after a week of coming to uneasy terms with her new routine that shit officially starts hitting the fan.

The ‘I’ll send them back after a few more checkups’ excuse can’t last. She’s known that the whole time, sure, but that doesn’t mean she didn't dread the day that it would fail.

And oh boy has it failed.

The families have obviously gotten over their relief and moved on to impatience. The frequency of their calls is increasing again, as is their urgency.

She basically has a script, at this point. Reassure them that yes, their family member is alive (technically true), yes, their family member is awake (also technically true), and that she still needs to monitor them indefinitely.

Gradually, though, the trickle of calls becomes a stream, then a river, then a flood. She's getting calls every few minutes now, and it's a bit overwhelming.

The final straw is the call she gets in the middle of her weekly anime marathon.

“Hey, is this doctor Alphys?” Sounds like a little kid. She doesn’t really know any kids, so she has no idea why one would have her number, but the voice does sound sort of familiar.

“Y-yes, that’s m-me…”

“Do you have my mom?” And suddenly, she knows where she’s heard this voice before. That little kid who came in with his dad to drop off Snowdrake so long ago.

“Y-yeah, your m-mom is here.”

“Can you give her back?.”

“S-sorry, but she’s, uh, n-not r-ready to leave y-yet.” Normally, this would be where she tries to get in a quick goodbye and hang up, but something about this kid makes her want to see it through.

“Can I at least talk to her?” 

And Alphys is almost tempted to say yes, but she knows that would give her away immediately. Snowdrake is in no condition to talk normally, especially to the family she’s so desperate to see again.

“S-sorry… but y-you can’t.”

There’s silence on the other end.

“Well, that’s pretty _cold_ of you.” It takes Alphys a second to realize that was a pun, but she can’t muster up much more than a breath of laughter in response. 

“Ha, you laughed… well, bye, I guess.” 

He hangs up before she can respond.

She thinks of Snowdrake, probably hiding out in the fridge room, melting and dissolving. One of the only things Snowdrake can coherently remember anymore is her family, and how she needs to get back to them.

But the truth is that she’ll never get them back. That kid will never see his mom again. Alphys feels sick. 

The next call she gets is from Dogamy’s number, and Alphys can’t bring herself to pick up. The same thing happens when Shyren calls, and then again when Aaron calls.

The voicemails are constant. She deletes most of them without listening, but the ones she does dare to play are all the same.

_”I thought you said Mom was coming home soon. How long can it take to give her a few checkups?”_

_“Uh, hi. Is my sister almost ready? She was my agent… so I need her back.”_

_“Hey, is my wife okay? My son misses his mothah. She was the only one who laughed at his awful puns, and he’s drivin’ me up the wall.”_

Soon, she’s leaving her phone on silent all the time.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 19: the families keep calling me to ask when everyone is coming home. what am i supposed to say? i don't even answer the phone anymore.** _

* * *

New Voicemail: Asgore (♥ω♥), 7:06 AM

_“Hello, Alphys. I’m just checking in on you and the monsters. Some of the family members have been calling me. I understand that you’re busy, but try to pick up the phone when you can. Have a good day!”_

New Voicemail: Asgore (♥ω♥), 9:43 AM

_“Hello again! Just following up. Dogamy just called asking for updates on Dogerella. Please call him back when you have time. Also, call me back when you have time. Maybe the three of us can get together for tea. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”_

New Voicemail: Asgore (♥ω♥), 12:21 PM

_“Well, it looks like I’ll leave another voicemail. I do hope you’re getting these. The families seem worried, so I’m just making sure you’ve got everything under control. I told them not to be too upset- science is hard, and I’m sure you’re working around the clock! But do try to get back to them. They’re just worried about their loved ones.”_

New Voicemail: Asgore (♥ω♥), 3:47 PM

_”Oh dear, looks like you’re still busy! Well, I’ll just leave another message. Dogamy called again. He doesn’t want to have tea. That’s too bad, but tea will still be nice with just the two of us, don’t you think? Anyway, he says that he wants me to tell you to give him some answers. He sounded upset, so I tried to reassure him, but… Don’t you think you can reassure him best? Just tell him how hard you’re working to clear Dogerella for release, and I’m sure he’ll calm down. Anyway, call everyone back when you have a chance. Have a nice evening.”_

New Voicemail: Asgore (♥ω♥), 5:08 PM

_“Alphys, it looks like I’m calling again. I’m in New Home and I just came across this little yellow teacup that made me think of you. You should come pick it up when we have tea! It’s very nice.”_

_**ENTRY NUMBER 20: ASGORE left me five messages today. four about everyone being angry. one about this cute teacup he found that looks like me. thanks asgore. __**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a n g s t
> 
> srsly though, poor alphys is living my nightmare right now. tense phone calls _suck_.


	17. familiar faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She couldn't avoid this forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello reader! this is just a warning that alphys is not in a good place right now, and this chapter does include some suicidal thoughts along with the usual anxiety stuff. stay safe guys :)

It gets to a point where the only break Alphys has from phone calls is sleep, and whenever she’s asleep she dreams about

_dying melting monsters reaching for her hand and_

_Asgore condemning her for her crimes and_

_Mettaton laughing as he broadcasts her humiliation and_

_voices of please please let me see my family when are they coming back_

_as everyone melts away in a soup of **determination**_

So, yeah, basically, there’s no escape. She’s starting to think the only way she’s ever shaking this is if she dies. Oddly enough, that’s a comforting thought- if it keeps getting worse, she can always just…

Anyway. She hasn’t talked to anyone since that Snowdrake kid. Asgore still wants her to come in for tea, but she’s been ignoring his invitations ~~because she ignores every phone call she gets now~~.

Just the idea of leaving her lab is paralyzing, which sucks because being in her lab is awful too. Even visiting the lower lab once a day for a check-in on her 'patients' sends her spiraling into sweaty anxiety, and all of her de-stressing routines are decreasing rapidly in effectiveness. Hell, she's rewatched Mew Mew 1 so many times that she can mimic not only the lines but most of the battle poses.

She needs a new distraction.

* * *

It's one of those rare moments that Alphys actually has her phone with her, and not on silent. She's been going through her voicemail box- it's filled up (for the third time this week because everyone's calling her all the time now), so she's purging it as fast as she can, trying not to look at the contact names attached to each one or get distracted by Mew Mew playing in the background.

And she gets a call.

Now, Alphys has picked up some serious skills over her brief career of avoiding any and all calls, and one of them is the Instant Call DeclineTM, but she looks at the screen and sees who's calling her and hesitates to click that off button for the first time in days.

How long has it been since she's talked to Mettaton? God, it was before all this shit with the amalgamates.

Every survival instinct she has is telling her not to pick up. For reasons unknown, she picks up anyways.

"H-hello?"

"HELLO, DARLING! HONESTLY, YOU _HAVE_ TO GET BETTER AT PICKING UP THE PHONE!" Hah. Yeah, isn't that the truth.

"Y-yeah, that's rich c-coming from you. Wh-what was it y-you always said? S-something like, uh..."

"PICKING THE PHONE UP BEFORE IT RINGS TWICE ELIMINATES THE SUSPENSE. YES, I KNOW, BUT THAT'S _MY_ THING, DARLING. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONE WHO GETS WORRIED THAT PEOPLE WON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU IF YOU MAKE THEM WAIT."

Right. She has said that in the past, hasn't she?

"W-well, people c-can change. M-maybe _I've_ ch-changed. Wh-what would you k-know?"

Silence. Wow, that came out _way_ too defensive. 

"ARE YOU ALRIGHT, ALPHYS?" And... double wow. She's managed to be so obviously upset that she's concerned _Mettaton_ , the most self-absorbed, oblivious monster she knows.

"I... I d-don't know. A l-lot's been going on." 

"YES, ASGORE TOLD ME YOU'VE BEEN BUSY LATELY." Asgore _what_?

"M-Mettaton, wh-what? You've been talking t-to Asgore?"

"WELL, DARLING, IN CASE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN, WE MANAGED TO CONVINCE HIM QUITE NICELY THAT I'M AN ANTI-HUMAN MONSTER DEFENDING _WEAPON_. COMBINE THAT WITH MY OBVIOUS CHARISMA AND _OF COURSE_ HE'D BE INTERESTED IN GETTING TO KNOW ME!"

Oh, that actually kind of makes sense. 

"BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY OFF, DARLING, SO WHAT'S WRONG?"

Screw it. It's not like she has to tell him _everything_ , she can just... get some of it off her chest.

"It- it just feels like everything is going _wr-wrong_ right n-now. Every t-time I g-get somewhere, I j-just... fall back to square o-one! And it's s-starting to feel so p-pointless. I d-don't know."

"I'M NOT GOING TO PRETEND TO KNOW OR CARE ABOUT THE SCIENCE YOU'RE DOING, BUT IF IT'S REALLY SO OVERWHELMING, WHY DON'T YOU JUST TELL ASGORE? HE'S VERY UNDERSTANDING."

"I j-just... h-he gave me th-this job, and h-he's so _p-proud_ every time I say I've g-gotten somewhere. I d-don't want to disappoint him."

"YOU WON'T DISAPPOINT HIM. HE HAS TO REALIZE HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY HE'S PUTTING ON YOU. EXPECTING ONE PERSON TO MAKE A WHOLE SOUL?"

"It- it's not even th-that anymore! I already f-failed at that, and n-now I'm failing at the n-next responsibility he's g-given me."

"THEN TELL HIM TO SHOVE HIS RESPONSIBILITIES, DARLING! DO NORMAL SCIENCE THINGS LIKE, I DON'T KNOW, INVENT INCREASINGLY EXPENSIVE CELL PHONES AND FANCY NEW DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS." 

"Y-yeah, I'll just g-go up to the King of the Un-Underground and tell him to _sh-shove it_."

"WELL, NOT IN THOSE WORDS. HE WANTS TO HAVE TEA WITH YOU, SO TURN OFF MEW MEW KISSY WHATEVER, TAKE A SHOWER, LEAVE YOUR LAB, AND TALK TO HIM OVER TEA."

"I-I'm not w-watching M-"

"YOU ALWAYS WATCH IT WHEN YOU'RE STRESSED, AND I CAN HEAR IT IN THE BACKGROUND, DARLING."

"You know wh-what? Fine. I'll t-take your advice. And if I g-get fired, I'm c-coming to live with y-you. And watch anime every n-night. And p-put my figurines on all of your f-furniture."

"OH, HEAVENS FORBID! YOU WOULDN'T DARE DO SUCH A THING TO A POOR, LOYAL FRIEND!" This is familiar territory. Dramatic, silly Mettaton is so much easier to deal with than serious, empathetic Mettaton.

"Y-yes, I would. I'm g-going to t-talk to the k-king, and b-both of our fates will be, uh, s-sealed."

"WELL, IF YOU EVER NEED A DISTRACTION FROM THE KING AND YOUR TERRIFYING RESPONSIBILITIES, I KNOW THERE'S A VERY SPECIFIC ROBOT WHO WOULD APPRECIATE A NICE NEW BODY-"

She hangs up, but she's pretty sure he'll understand that it's (mostly) a joke.

She turns off Mew Mew and walks out of the TV room. If she's going to follow his advice, she should probably follow all of it ~~(especially the 'take a shower' bit)~~.

Endogeny oozes from a crack in the wall and follows her for awhile. A week ago, watching a multi-dog abomination slide out from between the tiles and slither after her would have given her nightmares, but now it barely phases her. Once it's gone, though, she's better able to process what just happened.

She talked to Mettaton, and it was only kinda weird, and he was very obviously joking when he mentioned his body. She got _actual good advice_ from _Mettaton_ , Mr. Dramatically-Swooning-Solves-Every-Problem. Because that's the kind of mindfuckery her life has become.

For the first time in longer than she can remember, she feels really motivated.

* * *

That motivation lasts Alphys until she's out the door, and then she's looking around at Hotland and realizing that _this is a mistake and she shouldn't have listened to the stupid toaster_.

But amazingly, she keeps walking. Today is just a day for bad decisions.

She's made the trek so many times that she can put herself on autopilot. Elevators and walking and more elevators, and then she's in New Home, standing in front of that familiar door, contemplating all of the choices that brought her here. 

She's not sure whether it's good or bad luck that Asgore is here this time. He's standing ankle deep in the flowers, utterly focused on watering them. Somehow, that doesn't stop him from noticing her almost immediately.

"Alphys, hello! It's so nice to see you! Do you want some tea?"

"Uh, h-hi, and y-yeah, I guess."

And he's off, setting the watering can down and leading her out of the throne room.

"It's been so long since we've really talked. I'm glad you decided to visit today."

"Yeah, it's b-been awhile, and... I h-have some t-things to tell you." Here we go. 

"Of course. Let's just get the tea first."

* * *

Alphys is sitting in Asgore's house, the smell of golden flower tea starting to permeate the air. It's nice, peaceful, and the beginning of the end, because she's about to get fired (and possibly imprisoned).

"Here we are! Be careful, it's a little hot."

The tea is set down in front of her. For someone so big and imposing, Asgore is surprisingly delicate when he needs to be. It used to be perfect fuel for her fanfiction, but now it's just sad because she's about to give this nice, gentle guy absolutely _horrible news_.

She takes a sip. It's not too hot. Actually, it's very soothing.

"Do you like the mug?"

Oh, right, the mug. It's yellow and dinosaur shaped and... yeah, it does kinda look like her.

"It's very c-cute."

"I'm glad you like it. You can keep it, if you want."

"Y-yeah, I think I will. Th-thanks, Asgore."

The amiable silence lasts a few more sips. Then suddenly, his expression shifts. He's all business now.

"So, what updates do you have for me?"

It's time.

"I... I d-don't know h-how to say this, but- b-but... the monsters are d-dead." 

His expression shifts immediately. There's shock and anger and grief, but he finally settles on neutrality.

"What do you mean?"

"Th-the determination was too m-much for them. Th-they... they dusted."

"When?" One word questions. not good not good not good-

"Uh- uh, a f-few days ago. I j-just... didn't know how t-to tell anyone..." bad bad bad bad she sounds so bad

"Alright. Alright, do you have their dust?"

"N-no, I, uh, the v-ventilation system in the l-lab... it's h-horrible, but, I c-can't get the d-dust back."

His face is so unreadable.

"I- I'm so s-sorry, I j-just couldn't tell anyone, not after I t-told them everyone was o-okay. I d-didn't know what t-to do, and I j-just-"

"Doctor. Stop, please. This isn't all your fault. I made unreasonable demands of you, and... I was the one to suggest that you use these monsters for your work." He pauses and squares his shoulders. "The responsibility falls on both of us." 

He looks sad, now. Just deeply sad. She's never seen his face so _old_ before.

"I will call the families. You should go back to your lab for now, but... please, answer my calls."

He stands up and walks out of the room, expression once again unreadable, eyes downcast. The weight of the world seems to have settled firmly on his shoulders.

* * *

Mug in hand, Alphys does go back to her lab. It's once she gets there that she collapses against the wall, shaking. She shouldn't have gone, she shouldn't have told Asgore that the monsters were dead, she shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning.

The way he'd gone from happy and relaxed to grieving and guilty will probably be another facet of her nightmares, now. 

_Look at the pain you've caused. As if it wasn't enough to ruin your own life, you had to go ruin Asgore's, too._

_You break everything you touch. Now the king is grieving and your test subjects are living half-lives and their families are going to have to mourn them_ again _._

_They'll all hate you._

_They'll want your dust._

_Maybe you should give it to them. Be good for something._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so maybe i just wanted more mtt. seriously though, they're still friends! sure, things are tense, but mettaton is a compassionate ghost-robot dude who would help alphys if he thought she wasn't doing well. that's just one of the minor hills i'm willing to die on.


	18. garbage

The families got the news eight or so days ago, and all hell has broken loose. Alphys’ phone is currently in a box in the TV room, buzzing and ringing nonstop. She put it in there after her voicemail box filled up, and she's left it there since. 

And no, the phone calls aren’t offerings of support or solidarity from the families. She listened to the one from Dogamy. That message is the first time Alphys has ever heard one of the dogs swear- hell, it’s the first time she’s heard anyone fit that many expletives into a ten second rant.

They’ve even started sending physical mail to her lab. She feels like she’s under siege.

Her only retreat is down, where the amalgamates are. Their obvious stress and pain makes her feel even worse, reminds her exactly why those families deserve to be so upset.

Point is, every second she spends in her lab is a second spent in a growing pile of stress and frustration and she needed to get out of there, so here she is, ankle deep in the stagnant, garbage-scented water of the Waterfall dump.

She’d hoped that coming here would let her forget about everything, go back to a time before labs and amalgamates and determination. Waterfall used to be home. The dump used to feel like a treasure trove- one day there would be the perfect wheel for Mettaton’s first body, the next there would be a new figurine.

All she can see right now is a smelly dump.

It feels so small. It did before, too- there was a reason she and Mettaton wanted to get out so badly- but now it just feels tiny and deserted and utterly silent.

Piles of trash loom on either side of her, everything from cans and bottles to spare parts and food wrappers and old toys. Anything and everything that a human would want to throw away. To humans, this is junk. To so many monsters, this the inspiration for modern technology and a window into another world. One man's trash is another monster's treasure.

To her right now, it's all just trash.

She kicks a soda can. It lands a few feet away. The kick sprays stagnant water into Alphys’ face, and she sputters a little bit.

Whatever. Keeping herself clean is a lost cause anyway. She sits down, feeling the slimy bottom of the dump-puddle under her tail.

She spends the rest of the day sitting there, trying not to think about how much worse she deserves.

* * *

_”Uh, I wouldn’t normally call someone like this but… I miss my sister. And I guess I just don’t know why you didn’t tell me? You… killed her. And the least you could do is… call me and own up? Or apologize? I shouldn’t have called. I just don’t know… why would you do this?”_

* * *

She goes back the next day, too. Something about the quiet… it’s so, so much better than the flood she’s getting at home. 

On her way into Waterfall, she catches a glimpse of Mettaton’s cousin (what was their name again? Napster-something?). Emphasis on glimpse- they’re hovering translucently in front of the muddy bank of the dump, and as soon as she makes eye contact with them, they blink out of sight.

Awkward. She’d forgotten how off-putting it is when a ghost just goes poof. It makes her glad that Mettaton seems content to stay in his body from now until he fully bonds with it.

And then… and then what? Whenever she thinks about that nebulous future where she’s finished Mettaton’s real body and he’s living his fully-realized dream, it ends with him leaving her in the dust. During that call, he seemed so genuinely supportive that she doubted the validity of her fears for a moment, but-

When he finds out about everything, as he’s bound to, what chance in hell is there that he _won’t_ be disgusted? 

He would be right to be disgusted. He would be right to leave.

She deserves to be alone.

* * *

_"I hope you know what you’ve done. You killed my wife. My son lost his mothah. You don’t deserve to be called a scientist.”_

* * *

Alphys spends her third day in the dumps halfheartedly trying to look around the way she used to.

She roots around in a half-soaked pile and a singular boot falls on her head. She finds a poster that would have been cool if the front and center woman-warrior wasn't half naked. What looks like it might have been a figurine falls from the top of an especially unstable pile and sinks down into the sludge.

She digs around in a promisingly dry pile for a little bit, and actually manages to find a cooler of soda. Whoever threw this out must have done it by accident. Either that, or they didn't like the brand. All the human media she's watched has made her realize how wasteful they are.

Whatever. Better for her.

For a second, she feels the thrill of a good find. It’s almost like old times, when she would let herself do a celebratory little dance with every prize.

But something twists in her stomach as soon as the thrill fades because _when did she earn the right to feel accomplished?_

She leaves the soda in the water and calls it an early day.

* * *

_”Hey, man, what the hell? Chris was my bro. You experimented on him. You didn’t even let me say goodbye. And I thought you were kinda chill, too. I guess you’re just a major-league bitch after all.”_

* * *

Alphys sees Napsterblook or whatever again on the fourth day. They’re hovering in the dump this time. They’re crying. According to Mettaton, they do that a lot, but… she wonders if they've realized yet that he isn't coming back. Whether they're lonely. Honestly, maybe they’re a little bit like her.

The last person they had left is gone now. They’re alone in the trash with a failing business and no hope.

_But they didn’t experiment on other monsters. They haven’t built everything they have on a tower of lies._

She intentionally splashes her first few steps, and breathes a sigh of relief when they phase out of sight.

* * *

_”You little lizard bitch. You think you can take my mom from me? You think you can experiment on her and kill her and get away without so much as fucking telling me yourself? You probably think you’re really clever, making the king do your dirty work._

_I’m onto you, bitch._

_We’re all onto you.”_

* * *

On her fourth day, she smells like garbage before she even walks around in the garbage water. She didn’t bother to shower last night, so the smell of trash is still stuck under her scales. 

She doesn’t bother with looking around or thinking about anything. She just sits down in the sludge and cries.

Every time she moves, trash shifts around her and brushes against her ankles. Her tail kicks up something slimy.

In another life, she might have found the idea of crying in a pile of trash ironically funny. _God, the dramatic self-pity trope is_ so _overused._

No laughter here, though. All she can think about right now is how miserable everything is. Everyone hates her. She’s trash, sitting in a pile of trash.

_**ENTRY NUMBER 21: i spend all my time at the garbage dump now. it's my element.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess you could say that Alphys is feeling pretty _down in the dumps_
> 
> jokes aside, it's tough times for alphys rn. this is the last true lab entry, and it's not a fun note to end em on.


	19. Captain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again, reader! we're back for another chapter with another pre-chapter warning note. the beginning of this one gets pretty heavy, so warning for suicidal thoughts and ideation, and basically almost a suicide attempt. hang in there guys :)

The water swishes around Alphys’ ankles. She’s walking past the section of the dump she usually frequents- she’d only managed to stand there like she usually does for a second before the familiar trash piles and the familiar smell and the familiar slime started to make her feel sick.

So she’s walking, something nasty slithering under her skin, urging her forward. She feels on-edge, something about this seems so _urgent_... it's very unsettling.

And then she reaches the chasm. This has always been a source of curiosity. The trash flows into Waterfall, then eventually becomes dislodged from piles and keeps flowing, over the edge and into the void. Where does it go? What could lie down there?

Alphys has always had a metaphorical scifi-boner for this place. So many questions, so much mystery and intrigue- the possibilities are endless.

Now, though, a new curiosity is starting to work its way in. A candy wrapper disappears over the edge of the void, floating down into the darkness, and she wonders all of a sudden whether she could just follow it. Disappear.

Would she end up in a new dimension? Would she fall twenty feet, break a few bones, and get stuck, starving and dying in a silent hole? Would she flow downriver into a new system of caverns? Would she just fall and dust? 

All of them sound sort of appealing.

Just disappearing, leaving all of the chaos behind… the idea feels too good to be true.

What other escape does she have? This is her life now, and right in front of her is a yawning abyss of possible freedom.

She knows it’s probably just a long drop into a deep hole. She knows she’ll probably just dust on impact or drown a few minutes later. The knowledge isn’t a deterrent.

Alphys shuffles just a bit closer to the edge, and peers down in earnest. That on-edge feeling skitters under her skin again.

Her internal voice of reason reminds her that she can’t just disappear and leave everything unfinished. What about the families? Asgore? Mettaton? The amalgamates?

 _The families would_ love _for you to disappear._

That’s probably true. A few of them have expressed as much- she’s heard everything from ‘disappear so I don’t have to think about you anymore’ to ‘go jump in lava’ in those voicemails.

One point for the “Jump” category.

_Asgore won’t have to clean up your messes anymore. He’ll be relieved to hear that you’re gone._

She’s been such a horrible employee. He’s probably dealing with the same rage from the families that she is ~~but he’s not standing at the edge of a cliff, thinking about offing himself.~~

He might be sad to hear that he’s lost someone else- then he’ll find the amalgamates and realize what she’s done. He’ll find the tapes she stole, and realize what she’s kept from him. He’ll grieve for awhile longer, then breathe a sigh of relief that she’s gone.

Two points for jumping.

_Mettaton would just be sad that he’s never getting his hot new body. Other than that, he’s already basically gone._

Other than that one supportive call, he’s been radio silent for the last few weeks. And was that call really all that helpful? His advice brought Alphys to where she is now: Asgore disappointed and families breathing down her neck.

Screw Mettaton.

She should jump before she psyches herself out.

_Without you to feed them, to force them to continue existing, the amalgamates will probably quietly starve. You can’t bring yourself to put them out of their misery, but without you around, maybe their suffering will finally end._

She gets closer to the edge. There’s no reason not to try, at least. This is all for the be-

“HEY! PUNK! GET AWAY FROM THERE!”

Alphys squeaks, scrambles backwards. What the hell, who the hell, what-

“I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO STOP- Oh, wait you’re not a kid!”

Alphys turns to the loud, formerly-angry voice and sees…

Oh, man. Just her luck, she runs into the first new hot person she’s met in ages, and it’s when she’s sad and garbage-scented. Her face heats more than she thought was possible.

This is literally the armor clad, badass-eyepatch’d woman of her dreams and fanfiction. Her single eye is bright yellow. Her skin is a deep, shimmering blue. Her red hair is in a ponytail behind her that’s somehow flowing the in wind? The non-existant wind? How???????? Also wow(!!!!!!!!)

She can salvage this. She’s watched anime long enough to deeply understand the art of the Cool Smooth Pickup Line.

“Y-yeah...I’m, uh, n-not... a k-kid?”

Great job, Alphys. 11/10. Way to shoot your shot.

“Sorry, man. There are these kids that keep STANDING AT THE EDGE and staring down, and I just KNOW that they’re going to lose their balance. Kids are just DUMB, right?!” The warrior smiles, and _ohmygod_ she even has cool ~~hot~~ sharp teeth.

“Anyway, you were staring pretty hard at that hole. What’re ya thinkin’ about?”

“Uh… j-just where th-the waterfall might g-go.”

“Awesome! I figured it was something like that, _thought_ you looked like a nerd- but in a kinda COOL way, y’know?”

“O-oh, uh th-thanks. I g-guess?”

“You’re even shyer than my neighbor, huh? That’s okay!!! Where do you think it goes?”

“O-oh, w-well, it could j-just be a hole. Th-the river has to go somewhere, so there m-might be… more c-caverns? M-maybe.”

“Wouldn’t that be COOL? A whole new Underground, under our Underground??? An UNDER-Underground!!!!” That single eye is mesmerizing right now, bright and fiery and passionate.

“Heh, y-yeah, that would be kinda… c-cool.”

The warrior sits down at the edge of the Waterfall.

“Do ya hear that, UnderUnderground? Undyne and her nerd friend are gonna DISCOVER YOU!!!”

Alphys sits down as well, kicking her feet back and forth in the curtain of water.

“But hey, nerd friend, I never got your name.” The warrior- apparently Undyne, _Captain of the Royal Guard Undyne_ \- is still grinning at her.

“Uh, Al-Alphys. Is m-my name.” And somehow, despite the painfully awkward delivery and horribly obvious stutter, that toothy grin gets wider and toothier. 

“Awesome! I’m Undyne, but you probably knew that, because I JUST SHOUTED IT!!!!” She shouts again, voice booming and echoing through the cavern.

“So, do you have any other cool theories about the cave?” Undyne looks genuinely curious. It’s not Mettaton’s I’m-just-humoring-you-because-I-want-to-be-a-good-friend face (or LED screen), or Asgore’s I’m-your-boss-so-I’m-required-to-hear-what-you’ve-been-thinking-about face. It’s open and intrigued, and suddenly Alphys _wants_ to tell her all about it.

“W-well, I’ve been studying multiversal th-theory and I think th-that if it’s p-possible to access other t-timelines, it would be through, uh, r-rips in reality th-that might look something l-like this ch-chasm.”

Undyne’s eyes are wide and bright. She looks like her mind has been blown. The idea that she, _Alphys_ could have made someone so intrigued… it feels really good.

“SCREW the UnderUnderground! We should go see what other dimensions are like! Do y’think there are other Undynes somewhere?”

“I m-mean, there’s the p-possibility that alternate worlds could b-be like slightly d-different versions of ours. There could be worlds where w-we’re all d-dark and evil, or worlds where… we’re in space, or w-worlds where we’re all in c-completely different r-roles, with different personalities!”

“Whoa. That sounds so cool! What if there’s one where you’re the guard and I’m the nerd??? I want to meet them! Also, I want to meet SPACE UNDYNE!!!!” 

Undyne’s enthusiasm is contagious. Alphys had forgotten how it felt to be this excited. 

“Of c-course, there’s always the p-possibility that it’s a n-network of underwater caves. S-some of those networks can go on f-for _miles_ , there m-might even be another c-connection to the caverns that accesses the s-surface somewhere!”

"So we could go to the surface without breaking the barrier?!"

"W-well, in theory... m-maybe? But we would have t-to be able to breathe underw-water."

"Alphys, I CAN BREATHE UNDERWATER! Let's GO!" Is she joking? Alphys can't tell. It's funny anyway.

"We don't actually kn-know that there's water down there. You c-could fall and d-die. Also, even if there are f-flooded caves, they c-could go on for ages. You'd g-get lost."

"Damn. Nerds can be such killjoys." Oh no, she screwed it up. She had a chance and she ruined it. Again. "But you also probably saved my life!!! So you're the COOL kind of killjoy nerd!!!!!"

Thank god. It's okay.

Actually, this is going way, way too well.

The fact that she’s had an actual conversation with someone that isn’t an anime figurine or her boss, and the fact that that someone is cool, badass, _incredibly hot_ Captain of the Royal Guard Undyne doesn’t occur to her until she’s lying in bed a few hours later. 

She can’t sleep, but for once it’s not because of the nightmares crawling at the edges of her mind. She’s genuinely _happy_ for the first time in so, so long.

* * *

She goes back the next day, hoping to see Undyne again. She looks over the edge and only thinks for a second about how easy it would be to jump into oblivion.

A few minutes later, she hears light, splashing footsteps.

“HEY! NERD! OVER HERE!”

Alphys turns around, already feeling her spirits lifting.

“H-hey, Undyne.” She lifts her hand to wave, realizes how awkward that probably looks, and snaps it back down.

“C’mon, we looked at the cliff yesterday. Let’s go find some cool trash!”

The trash is the same as it’s been for weeks, but where accidentally dropping something cool into the sludge or letting trash fall on her head is sad and embarrassing alone, it’s _fun and funny_ with Undyne.

Undyne reveals that she was only here yesterday because she wanted to “find some cool new swords.”

She has an actual collection of swords and Alphys might be in love.

* * *

The next day, they meet in the same spot. They go through the trash again, and Alphys comes out of it with a new figurine that’s in pretty good condition.

“What’s with the little statue, anyway?”

“W-what?”

“Are you gonna perform an awesome ritual or something?”

“Oh-oh! No, this is a f-figurine. She’s j-just a cool anime character.”

“What’s anime? Is it a human thing?” The intrigued face is back.

Undyne doesn’t know what anime is. This is a crime against monsterkind that must be rectified.

Needless to say, the rest of the day is dedicated to her education. And so what if Alphys embellishes the general coolness of anime a little bit? It’s not like there’s any definitive proof that it _isn’t_ human history.

* * *

Meeting at the waterfall is a sort of unspoken arrangement, now. Every few days, Alphys wakes up, feeds the amalgamates, and practically runs off to the dump to meet Undyne.

There are still a lot of nights where she lies in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling her failures skittering under her skin.

She still has to take a second to wait for the sweating and shaking to stop whenever she spends time around the amalgamates.

She still gets hateful letters and voicemails every day, and Asgore is still disappointed.

But she’s not alone anymore, and that counts for something, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kinda longer chapter because undyne deserves it
> 
> alphys gets a break! this sort of thing doesn't just magically get fixed, but... she's in a better place to make some progress now!
> 
> i think there should only be about one or two more chapters after this. whoa


	20. Camera Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Undyne actually has kinda good ideas? Also, since when was there another skeleton?

A week passes, and then another. She reinstates weekly anime nights, at Undyne’s house now, and it turns out that the captain is a _much_ more enthusiastic viewer than Mettaton ever was.

They don’t meet at the waterfall every day anymore, but they don’t need to, because they can call each other.

Someone cue the inspiring orchestral music. _Alphys has managed to get a hot person’s phone number._

So they do. Call each other, that is. Not every day- this is still a new friendship, and Undyne does have a job to do. But they talk. Alphys gets to hear a familiar voice that isn’t Asgore’s or Mettaton’s. Hearing her phone ring no longer sends quite as much of a jolt of anxiety through her every time. There’s still anxiety, sure, but there’s also a little flutter of hope that it might be Undyne.

She drops the dog food bowl on her foot and curses. Endogeny cocks their head to the side as if to say, “C’mon, Alphys, you’ve known this woman for three weeks and you’re already getting lost in thought about how great she is?” She needs to get it together.

And so she hurries through the rest of the feeding and goes back upstairs to… sit by her phone, basically.

One of the downsides of no longer having a task is that there’s not much to do all day but think about everything she’s done, cry a little, and hope Undyne calls her.

* * *

Undyne doesn’t call her until the evening. She must have been patrolling. That’s okay. Just the fact that she does call stirs up enough butterflies in Alphys’ stomach to remind her that _she’s only just met Undyne and she already has the biggest possible crush_.

“H-hi, Undyne.”

“Hey, nerd!” The customary greeting only stirs up more butterflies.

“Wh-what’s up?”

This is the easy part, because once Undyne starts talking about her job, it’s unlikely she’s going to stop anytime soon.

“...and then the kid just disappeared! I swear, one second they were there and the next they were gone!”

“Do you have s-security f-footage or anything?”

“Hah! I wish! Those punks wouldn’t stand a chance!” Alphys snorts. “Anyway, what cool science things have you been doing?”

“Uh, n-not much. I’m kinda between p-projects right n-now.” Yeah, that’s a pretty nice way of saying that she royally fucked her last task up and is still waiting for Asgore to fire her.

“Really? So you have all these theories and stuff but nothing to do with them?”

“Uh… y-yeah?”

“So, WE can find something for you to do! Something that screams your name! Something that’ll burn the coolness of ALPHYS into the minds of your enemies!!!!!”

“I m-mean, I d-don’t really have any enemies. But. D-did you have anything in m-mind?”

“You said Asgore wants you to help break the barrier, right? What if you made an anti-human defense system? With lasers and traps and security cameras EVERYWHERE!!!”

“I m-mean… maybe not the l-lasers and traps, b-but you did say you w-wanted some c-cameras, right? Maybe I c-could put some of th-those around.” Honestly, part of what’s getting her gears turning is the idea of being able to see the Underground without leaving her lab. She could stay there, safe from nosy families, while still monitoring the outside world.

Not a bad plan at all.

* * *

Operation Surveillance kicks off during their next anime night. Alphys puts on a campy old anime called Dragon Ball Z in the background, and they get to work planning and sketching. Well, Alphys gets to work. Undyne mostly just tells her to put spikes and explosions on everything.

She’s going to put cameras pretty much everywhere, starting at the doors to the Ruins, which are where the humans have always come from, and ending at the exit to the CORE. She’s not going to try putting cameras in New Home. Asgore’s already watching her pretty closely, and invading his privacy could be the last straw.

“T-to be honest, I don’t kn-know how I’m gonna get c-cameras in all these p-places.”

“I’ll help you! Hell, my new trainee can help too! We can have a CAMERA PARTY!” Right. Undyne’s talked about her trainee- a skeleton from Snowdin who’s apparently learning to cook(?)

Why Undyne, who Alphys has seen punching her cereal, thinks it’s a good idea to pass that on to someone else, Alphys will never know.

But more importantly.

“A-about your trainee. Is h-he kind of sh-short? And s-smelly?”

“Huh? Naw, Papyrus is pretty damn tall. You’re thinking of his brother, Sans. He’s a little weirdo.”

“Oh-oh, okay. S-sans just freaks me out a l-little.” _And he might also be involved in whatever weird cult stuff the previous Royal Scientist was._

As soon as the topic of sketchy skeletons is out of the way, they’re back to work. She hasn’t been this inspired or productive since she was building Mettaton’s first body, and somehow Undyne’s suggestions are more endearing than distracting. Dragon Ball Z is blaring in the background and Undyne’s sword filled room feels _safe_.

Alphys wants to stay like this forever.

* * *

Two weeks later, the Camera Party is going about as well as she could have expected. Undyne is rambunctious and not very focused, and Papyrus is even more rambunctious and even less focused. Together, the three of them have managed to plant six cameras and lose three to lava.

“We have NO CHOICE but to throw the camera, Papyrus! I’m a fish, I roast in lava! And you’re a skeleton! You’d burn! Or sink! Or BOTH!”

“I WILL BRACE MYSELF ACROSS THE LAVA, AND YOU CAN WALK OVER MY BRIDGE OF FRIENDSHIP TO PLANT THE CAMERA! YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME, UNDYNE!” Alphys makes the mistake of thinking that the skeleton is joking, and almost fails to restrain him when he lunges for the chasm.

“Damnit, Papyrus, don’t die over a camera!”

Undyne glares at the offending recording device and throws it before Alphys can stop her. It sails across the chasm, lands with a _clink_ on the ledge… and bounces down into the lava below, sinking with a sad little bubble.

“G-guys. I have a st-stick.” She holds up the claw-stick that she’d brought for exactly this purpose. “We’ve lost f-four cameras n-now.”

They look like a pair of scolded kids. Alphys sighs.

“C-c’mon. We’ve got enough in H-Hotland. We sh-should do the C-CORE now.”

It’s fun to have a new friend, but it’s also _exhausting_.

* * *

Six long, long hours later, Alphys practically collapses in her bed. She likes Undyne’s energy and passion, but combined with Papyrus’ it’s a little overwhelming. Maybe one new person is her limit.

She’ll link the monitor up tomorrow. For now, she can already feel sleep creeping up on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> k so i've decided. that i'm gonna wrap this up in like one or two more chapters. and then make the behind the scenes for all the stuff with frisk into another fic.


	21. Bad Opinion Zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The anime night to end all anime nights.

Having a view of the entire Underground makes Alphys feel sort of powerful. She can see everything from the dogs patrolling Snowdin to the workers maintaining the CORE, and although she can’t hear anything, her monitor becomes the realest reality TV she’s ever had.

It’s not perfect- she has to sort of read people’s lips if she wants to guess what they’re saying, and a few of the cameras ended up at weird angles. One of the cameras she thought they’d lost to Hotland’s lava actually survived, upside down, with a riveting view of dark rock. One of the Snowdin cameras is watching the back of Lesser Dog’s sentry station, which in hindsight makes for a very boring view. 

The most interesting camera by far is the Ruins camera. Not because much happens around the Ruins- no, it’s completely deserted. It’s the potential that a human could walk out of those doors at any moment that has her watching that camera almost all the time now.

The idea of seeing a real, live human is thrilling, thrilling enough to justify hours of watching absolutely nothing happen.

* * *

Those hours of watching absolutely nothing happen are interrupted by anime night. 

The big anime night. Because tonight. Is the night. That Undyne learns all about the world of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie.

She brings Mew Mew 1 (because she should have left Mew Mew 2 in the trash, because _Mew Mew 2 is trash_ ) and some chisps. If there’s one thing she’s learned from her time with Undyne so far, it’s that the only safely edible fare the captain can cook is tea. Bringing her own refreshments is non-negotiable.

There’s a long moment where she stands outside Undyne’s door, listening to the crashing and slamming of her “cooking”, and wonders if she should just turn back. It’s not too late to cut this thing with Undyne off. Stop imposing herself on such a strong, passionate soul. Let the captain live her life, unmolested by the living baggage that is Alphys.

Alphys should turn back now. Head back to the lab and the amalgamates. _Or maybe back to the waterfall_.

Her thoughts get louder and louder, until they are drowned out by a muffled “NGAHHH” and another series of crashes from inside.

She shakes her head and knocks on the door.

The crashing stops, and a second later she’s looking at Undyne… and holy shit, Undyne is covered in blood.

“U-Undyne! Are y-you okay?” Alphys drops Mew Mew and the chisps and tries to figure out where the blood is coming from and-

“Hah! Yeah, I’m fine. Can’t say the same for those punk tomatoes, though!”

Oh. Oh, wait. This is just episode 4,003,308 of _Undyne Thinks Punching Things is Cooking_. Oops.

“O-oh. S-sorry, Undyne, I forgot you were c-cooking.” She bends down to pick up the anime so she doesn’t have to see the look on Undyne’s face. God, she must barely tolerate Alphys and her weird spazzy anxiety-

“Nah, you’re good. C’mon! I made SOUP!”

Well, everything’s going pretty normally so far.

The next ten or so minutes are occupied with setting up Mew Mew and settling in and trying not to vibrate in anticipation.

“So this is the really cool human history, huh?”

“Y-yeah, I think you’re going t-to love it. It’s got p-plot, and action, and r-romance, and everything.”

“Well, then, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR, NERD?! PLAY IT!” 

The first few minutes are nail-biting, because Undyne is unreadable. Her eye is wide, not nearly as fiery as usual, and Alphys is pretty sure she’s figuring out how to admit that she hates it-

The episode stops.

“Alphys, you nerd. This is. AMAZING! Why didn’t you tell me humans were so POWERFUL?”

“I m-mean, the humans in D-Dragon Ball Z were m-much more powerful, t-technically-”

“Yeah, but MIND CONTROL?! I should be warning the guards right now, but let's WATCH MORE INSTEAD!”

It turns out that Undyne is just as into cute action romance as Alphys is. They binge the entirety of Mew Mew 1, and then it’s over and Undyne is turning towards her with the most excited eye ever.

“NOW FOR PART TWO!!!”

Oh. Right. The teaser for Mew Mew 2 that they just watched. That has Undyne excited for Mew Mew 2, the worst anime Alphys has ever watched.

“I will n-never make you watch the _t-travesty_ that is p-part t-two. It c-completely ruins Mew Mew 1. It t-took me weeks to respect the f-franchise again, and I w-won’t put you through the same disappointment.”

Undyne is watching her rant with that big glittery eye, and having someone actively listening just fuels the flames.

“-and then they b-break up the only lesbian c-couple in the show f-for absolutely no r-reason, just to p-pair one of them with this absolute _asshole_ g-guy, and honestly, everything ch-charming just becomes s-so tacky! Everything w-worth watching about M-Mew Mew 1, completely written over f-for some vanilla, corporate pandering _g-garbage_ with no m-message at _all_.”

Alphys breaks off (whoa, when did her breathing get that heavy?) and glances back over at Undyne.

“Whoa. Alphys, that was BADASS!! I had NO IDEA you were so passionate about human history!!!! You should lecture at school or on TV or something!!!!”

“H-hah, like M-Mettaton would ever let me t-talk about anime on l-live TV.”

“I haven’t met the tin can yet, but he’d be CRAZY to keep you out of the spotlight! And if he tries, we can BREAK INTO HIS STUDIO AND STEAL IT!!!”

“Uh, n-no, let’s not st-steal things. B-besides, who would want t-to hear about my opinions on an-anime, anyway?”

“Me! And probably Papyrus, too! Don’tcha have an Undernet account or something?”

“U-Undernet?”

And so begins Alphys’ education, because apparently she’s been living under a rock (well, technically, everyone here is living under a mountain-sized rock, but that’s not the point). Undyne shows her how to make an Undernet account, and gets the dubious honor of being Alphys’ first follower.

Giving her a bigger platform for her opinions is probably a bad move on Undyne’s part. Alphys can’t bring herself to be much more than excited.

* * *

By the next morning, she has a follower count of two- overnight, someone called COOLSKELETON95 followed her. She can guess who that is, especially once he posts a photo of a couple piles of snow, captioned “ANOTHER PUZZLE DEPLOYED! PREPARE FOR JAPERY!”

She sits in front of her monitors and posts on Undernet, and it doesn’t feel quite as much like she’s sitting alone in her lab ~~with her failures crawling below her~~.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is undyne making things better? or is she just enabling alphys' shut-in lifestyle? only time will tell


	22. Projects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly, Alphys has a job again.

Having projects again is weird. Alphys had forgotten what it was like to actually do jobs, and now she has, like, three of them. 

And sure, technically two of them are unofficial and non-Asgore-sanctioned, but that’s irrelevant.

* * *

Project Number 1 begins a few weeks after she sets up those cameras with Undyne.

They don’t leave Undyne’s room often when they hang out (it’s quickly becoming an anime den to rival Alphys’ own, so why would they _want_ to leave?), but today’s one of those rare days where neither of them feel like sitting around.

Also, it’s work hours for Undyne and she’s supposed to be patrolling right now. But, uh… technically, walking around Waterfall is patrolling, right?

Yep. Definitely patrolling. 

They’re currently exploring the grasslands. Alphys never liked them much, but who is she to rain on Undyne’s parade? Where Alphys thinks the grass is itchy and bug-filled and muddy and gross, Undyne sees a good backdrop for dramatic ambushes and armor clad marches.

Then they get out of the grass and Alphys loses her composure and _shrieks_ when she sees the weird goop on her feet.

“Wh-what is this stuff?”

“Hah! That’s just the grass! It makes that sticky green stuff when it breaks! I pretend that the grass is my enemy and I’m bathing in its BLOOD!!!”

She’s never been into biology, but it makes sense that crushing seaweed would make it goopy. No reason to question it further.

Until she picks up a botany book out of curiosity and reads that seaweed can be used as a thickening agent in ice cream. Pretty cool, and she doesn’t have anything better to do.

So she collects some seaweed, and she makes some pink, fruity ice cream. And it’s nice, and there are no souls on the line when she accidentally puts in the wrong amount of sugar. Doing science that doesn’t have stakes is refreshing.

So she keeps making ice cream. The only problem with that is that she can’t eat two pints of ice cream every day, and her freezer is filling up quickly.

So when anime night comes around, Alphys brings some along. And Undyne… kinda misinterprets the genre of food, because she immediately puts it in the microwave. But she still likes the melted ice cream soup that it produces, so… it was technically a win?

It becomes a tradition to drop some ice cream off with Undyne every week. Alphys builds a machine specifically for the purpose of making it, so she doesn’t have to manually make a batch every day.

And then one day she shows up and finds the seaweed absolutely decimated. Where there was once a field of the stuff, there’s just a few sad clumps of barely unshredded grass.

She calls Undyne.

“H-hey, Undyne, uh, someone’s b-been vandalizing the s-seaweed. Maybe it was those k-kids you’re always ch-chasing around?”

“Oh, nah, that was me. It’s good target practice for my spears!”

Oh. Well, there goes her ice cream project.

But the idea of losing that feeling of doing something harmlessly productive hurts so much that instead of hanging up, she blurts out-

“Th-that grass is protected! You can’t d-destroy it. Because. It’s p-protected for… sc-science stuff.”

And there’s such a long silence that she’s convinced Undyne sees right through her _to the liar at her core_ but then it’s broken by

“Oh, Alphys, I’m so sorry!”

And Undyne is actually sorry, and promises not to destroy the grass, and the genuine remorse in her voice makes Alphys feel kinda bad for lying. But she doesn’t dwell on it, because she has monitors to watch and ice cream to make.

* * *

Project Number 2 follows Number 1 pretty closely, actually. 

She’s not hanging out with Undyne this time. She’s hanging out with herself and her monitors and a cup of instant noodles. And then her phone begins to ring. 

It’s Asgore. Asgore hasn’t called her since those first few weeks after telling the families that their loved ones were dead.

This must be it. She’s getting fired. It’s time for the blissful denial to end. 

“H-hello?”

“Howdy, Alphys. It’s good to hear your voice. How are you?” And wow, if this is the preface to her firing, he’s being cruelly nice.

“Uh, I’m o-okay. H-how are you?”

“Ah, I’m alright. I’m afraid this isn’t a call for too many pleasantries. I have a few questions for you.”

This is it. The moment she's been dreading since the day her test subjects melted.

“Are you responsible for the cameras I’ve been hearing about?” 

Huh. Of all the horrible things she’d expected to hear, that was not it.

“Y-yeah, that was m-me. I wanted to m-monitor the Underground b-because, uh…” Think fast. What’s a credible reason for surveilling everyone? “Th-the captain of the Royal G-Guard? Undyne? She m-mentioned that security c-cameras would be useful. S-so I made some.”

“Oh, you know Undyne? How delightful! I was meaning to introduce you. Well, I think having an extra information system is a very good idea.”

“Th-thank you! I’m s-sorry I didn’t t-tell you, I just-”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. I understand why you didn’t tell me, so I’ll make this fast. I think you should continue to watch the cameras, and maintain the traps around Hotland and the CORE. I’ve never given a Royal Scientist this responsibility, but we should be as prepared as possible for the next human.”

And so Alphys becomes part of the Underground’s defense system.

It doesn’t actually change her routine much- she still watches the monitors a lot, but now she’s being paid to do it. She has access to the Hotland Laser Database, which makes her feel very powerful, and she can mess with the defenses in the CORE.

Knowing that Asgore’s not only keeping her employed but actively giving her work… it feels like a weight has been lifted.

* * *

Project Number 3 comes long after the first two. It’s actually just after the first anniversary of her hiring, which is a very, very bittersweet event.

Needless to say, she’s in a weird mood. 

The call from Mettaton just tops it all off.

“DARLING! HOW ARE YOU DOING? BETTER? GOOD, BECAUSE I NEED YOUR HELP!” She blinks at the phone. Mettaton’s always pushy, but he rarely plows over her like this. Maybe he seriously needs help.

“Wh-what is it?”

“REMEMBER THAT PRODUCT LINE WE DISCUSSED AGES AGO?” Right. Back when they talked regularly. Definitely ages ago.

“Y-yeah. Do you want to, uh, m-make that?”

That’s exactly what he wants, and he wants it now. She tries to remind herself that he’s not impatient, just busy, but she can’t help but read into the edge in his voice. She tries to end the call as quickly as possible with a promise to meet him in person as soon as possible.

It turns out that “as soon as possible” means literally two hours later, because _”I’M A BUSY ROBOT, DARLING. THIS IS MY FIRST DAY OFF IN AGES!”_

They spend the rest of the afternoon sketching and prototyping, and it’s kinda like old times. Except instead of talking about whether or not a robot needs a glitter cannon, they’re talking about whether glitter is a marketable cheeseburger ingredient.

“M-Mettaton, I don’t think glitter is edible. Or rh-rhinestones.”

“YOU HAVE TO THINK BIG, DARLING! IF WE WANT THESE TO SELL, THEY HAVE TO BE AS GLAMOROUS AS POSSIBLE! THEY HAVE TO SCREAM _METTATON_ , AND WHAT SCREAMS METTATON MORE THAN GLITTER?”

“You know what _d-doesn’t_ scream “Mettaton”? F-food poisoning.”

Turns out that being famous has made him even more stubborn. Why is she not surprised?

Anyway, in the end they sign a contract with all their deadlines. They don’t have to sign a contract, and it isn’t even legally binding, but apparently Mettaton wants to present himself as a suave businessman now, and pretend contracts complete the image.

And he’s about to leave. Wheeling towards the door and everything. And then-

“DARLING, WHAT _IS_ THAT THING?” She follows the tilt of his screen-face-thing and her eyes land on the ice cream machine.

“Oh, w-well, I told you about Undyne, r-right? She r-really likes ice cream, so I m-made that thing to m-make it for her.”

“YOU INVENTED A NEW MACHINE JUST TO GET YOUR FRIEND ICE CREAM.”

“Y-yes?”

“TELL ME, SWEETHEART, WHAT’S SHE LIKE?”

This feels like an interrogation all of a sudden.

“She’s very, uh, strong and l-loud, and she likes v-violence- but in a c-cool way! Like a b-badass anime warrior. Oh, y-yeah, she likes anime t-too. Almost as much as I d-do, actually. I’ve been sh-showing her my f-favorite shows, and-”

“AND WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL ME AND TELL ME ABOUT ALL THIS? IT’S MY JOB TO KNOW WHO YOU’RE CRUSHING ON, DARLING!”

“N-no, your job is to d-dance around on TV and t-talk to your fans- wait, n-no, it’s not a _crush_ , she’s j-just a new friend-” If he had a face, oh, she can only imagine how smug it would be. He’s actually crossing his arms over his screen, the dork, waiting for her to shut up. At least he isn’t interrupting anymore.

“YOU DID THIS WITH ASGORE, TOO, DARLING. EXCEPT INSTEAD OF ICE CREAM, YOU TRIED TO MAKE HIM SOULS, AND WE BOTH KNOW HOW WELL THAT WENT.”

He really has no _idea_ \- hell, he thinks she just ran into a roadblock in the experiment and gave up. All of the humor drains away in a split second, leaving something bitter twisting in her chest. She gets Mettaton out the door as quickly as possible and distracts herself with monitor work.

When Undyne calls a few hours later, asking if Alphys knows why Mettaton has broken into her house to drape himself all over her piano, she considers giving the captain permission to chase him with spears for awhile. She’s starting to rethink her decision to try and rekindle this friendship.

Project Number 3 is the hardest of all of them, because making such a variety of products to her friend’s exacting specifications is _hard_. The glittery burgers (which she still thinks are a bad idea) don’t have to be designed until he finishes refurbishing the apartment complex into his hotel, but that’s only a small comfort.

And, yeah, he's making a hotel. The speed at which he’s amassed his wealth is honestly scary. He’s only been famous for the better part of a year and he’s already building a hotel and manufacturing a product line.

And she’s happy for him. She really is. He’s her friend, so of course she’s happy. He’s her friend, so she’s going to help him. _Definitely not because it’ll keep him around longer._

* * *

The more she has to do, the easier it is to stay on a high of having friends and having a job.

She just can’t think too hard about the abominations in her true lab, or the people they used to be, or the families that have no idea what really happened to them. 

She’s not stupid. She knows that she’s constructed this happy moment on a very precarious tower of lies and coverups. 

When she has an empty moment, after the high of completing a task has worn off, all she can think about is _if Undyne knew what Alphys has done, she’d march her to Asgore herself. She’s lied to get here, and now she’s lying to stay here, and she deserves whatever retribution she gets._

The shameguiltfear is unavoidable, but being back on track pushes it just far enough away in her mind that she can function again.

And so what if she spends each morning taking care of the tortured abominations she created? So what if she can’t sleep? So what if leaving her lab more than once a week paralyzes her with anxiety? So what if she sometimes thinks she sees a little golden flower out of the corner of her eye? 

She’s Royal Scientist Alphys, and everything is totally under control.

* * *

_Somewhere deep in the Ruins, a young child wakes up in a bed of golden flowers._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy heck guys it's done
> 
> seriously, thanks so much to everyone who read this. this is my first time publishing anything serious of mine anywhere, and seeing people actually read and like something that i wrote has been mindblowing.
> 
> i'm probably going to continue this in some form. i don't know what that's gonna look like, but i've really enjoyed writing this character and i don't want to stop lol.
> 
> once again, thank you so much for reading my thing!

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second fic ever, and my first long, serious fic. Feedback is welcome! :)


End file.
